


Cold As Vengeance

by ninjakitty15



Series: Immortal Peril [5]
Category: Loki - Fandom, Loki MCU, Loki/Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, MCU, Marvel, Nell the Necromancer - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:07:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 44,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29678175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjakitty15/pseuds/ninjakitty15
Summary: Settling into the married life with no more alien threats in the horizon, Nell and Loki quickly discover more trouble awaits them back on Midgard starting with a young woman breaking into their home, deadset on targeting Loki. But this is no ordinary woman out for blood, she's been sent by something big and secretive and is full of secrets even she's not entirely aware of. Determined to nip the problem in the bud, Nell and Loki keep their intruder under careful watch while digging deeper in the root of those secrets before the cat's out of the bag and all hell breaks loose.Disclaimer: I own only Nell, Zari, Lena and any other character and plot not already branded by Marvel, Sony, Disney and all those other lucky wealthy companies hoarding all the good stuff.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Loki and Original Female Character, Loki/OFC, thor/brunhilde
Series: Immortal Peril [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1497122
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	1. Walking Into Spiderwebs

Show me how to lie

You're getting better all the time

And turning all against the one

Is an art that's hard to teach

"Yellow!" I chirped into the phone like a true New Englander.

"Noelle," a familiar voice purred almost in question on the other end.

I blinked and arched an eyebrow despite the questioner not being around to see my reaction. "Yes, elsku dullan min? I know you know how to use our tech so you should already know I would be the only one answering mine."

"Firstly, you know what using my native tongue does to me," he growled.

I combed a hand through my hair and smirked to myself. "Why do you think I used it?"

"Fair play. When will you be getting back?"

I looked at the time on my phone curiously, and looked around me for a moment trying to add up how long it would take to wrap things up at the store plus how long it would get home without him teleporting me. "I mean if you came with me, it would take a split second but noooo, I'll be home when the cows come home. Why? Miss me already?"

"Like a wolf misses the moon."

"So not really as they don't howl at the moon they're just making a long distance call to relocate their pack, good to know."

"Noelle," he ground out with a sigh.

"I can feel you halfassed glaring at me because even though I can out-sass you, you can't help but enjoy the verbal tennis, don't deny it. I'll be back soon unless there's some crazyass traffic, keep your pants on till then. There a reason you wanted me back though?"

"We have a visitor."

"Like shiny armor and goody two shoes attitude, loves humanity kind of visitor or vengeance is mine kind of visitor."

"That remains to be seen when you arrive."

"I shall return post haste then, pip pip, cheerio, fruit loops!" I ended the call after that and paid for my stuff, now curious what or who could be waiting for me at home.

Lady Catalie was the first to greet me as I opened the door curiously to my home wondering what was waiting inside besides my husband. She rubbed up against me, even going extra and hopping onto her back feet to get my attention before trotting away where I suspected she wanted me to follow her and there was my answer of the day as there stood Loki with arms crossed in front of someone, before turning back to see me with our pet and relaxed the slightest bit.

"We have a conundrum here," he told me seriously.

I arched an eyebrow at him again, considering he was blocking my view of said conundrum. "You sure it's not just an enigma?" God I loved words like that, you know, the ones that were all the rage in Victorian times used to describe just about anything random. My favorite one is getting the morbs. 

Loki turned to me moreso and I was able to what he was referring to. "See for yourself."

On the other side of Loki was a young woman that couldn't be more than in her 20's, a teen of some kind definitely with long black hair and red eyes and I mean bloodred not trick of the light against brown red. She looked at me almost as curiously as I did at her and then back to Loki and I noticed her hands were cuffed in front of her with Agardian enchanted metal. "Loki, what did I tell you about stealing children on Earth, that ain't how we get one for ourselves."

Loki glowered at my half teasing tone and rolled his eyes at me. "She tried to break into our house while I was doing my own errands, when I caught her she attempted to look like you and claimed she lost her house key."

"A shapeshifter?" I purred. "How delightful! I'm gonna take a wild guess and say she couldn't remotely get my look down right, could she? Like a Chinese knockoff, twice the value and half the quality."

"Yes," Loki stretched out and had his own quizzical look. "Though I'm curious how you were so confident about that."

"I mean I could bet that you being the god of lies and a natural shapeshifter yourself you'd know a fake when you see one, but...for the same reason no one can hack my mind, no one can copy me, I don't exist, I can't be replicated. Though I wonder if it's also a thing that I'm dead, can shapeshifters copy dead things like Leviathans on Supernatural?"

"Aside from being you, I've personally never tried, always believed it was in poor taste even for me, I'm not sure it's doable but I wouldn't be surprised it wasn't either," Loki answered me. "She couldn't nail the eyes or the voice of you at all. Wait, if that was true, then why could I be you correctly?"

"Because you're you, and no one else can beat that, obviously, shapeshifters included. Nice try, kid!"

Loki fought back the urge to smirk himself at my response. "Now that you're here, we can start! Why are you here?" he turned back to the girl who's attention was instantly back to him after trying to throw a glare my way at my remark.

She stood straighter, chin up, confident and was taller than normal for a teenage chick. "I was sent here."

"By who?" Loki pressed. "And why?" He casually summoned a knife and began idly picking his nails with it, a subtle way of threatening he could do more than ask questions if he didn't like the answers or lack thereof.

Out of curiosity, I looked through the veil to see what kind of baggage she was carrying and my eyes widened as hers did in seeing milky blue go to milky white with my own. "She's either a serial killer or an assassin," I breathed out, and her eyes widened even more at my statement.

Loki turned back to me curiously, took one look at my eyes still in ghost mode and nodded in understanding, his stance going rigid and ready to attack. "I bet Shield will love this one."

I snorted. "Send her off in a big, red bow with a tag saying happy birthmas, maybe they'll get off our ass then."

"Birthmas? For someone that doesn't like Christmas, you seem to want to combine that with other holidays more than once," teased Loki.

"I love getting presents what I don't love is the holly jollyness, the fuckton of bright string lights, entirely too many versions of too many Christmas songs, and the pressure of getting the perfect present for people you haven't heard from the rest of the year," I replied dryly. "And it's only one other holiday, the only one that matters really."

"I still want to know why she's in our house before we send her off," Loki switched back to the first subject and with a wave of his hand, the cuffs on the girl glowed for a moment and she started to twitch and moan in pain. "Tell me," he hissed venomously. "Were you sent here to kill one of us? Both?"

"Both is good," I mused as I watched him literally work his magic on her.

"No," she moaned, her eyes shut tight and her body slowly starting to bend over like she couldn't stay on her feet much longer. "They need you alive."

"That must mean you, it's too late for me," I joked. "Why send an assassin for an extraction mission then I wonder."

"Answer her," Loki snarled at the girl. "Why am I needed alive?"

She dropped to her knees then, unable to stand any longer. She looked at her cuffs for a moment or rather her hands that started to shake violently and screamed in agony. "Your blood, your DNA, they need more of it!"

"Why?" Loki demanded. "Whatever shifting powers you have will rebound with those cuffs on, trying to shift will hurt you more."

"To make more soldiers!" she cried out finally.

Loki stiffened at the answer and lunged forward, reaching out and grasping her by the neck so her feet were dangling off the ground as he held her up to his level. "More? How many are there now?"

"Just one," she gasped out, both cuffed hands now trying and failing to pry his off her neck.

"We're not taking her to Shield," Loki informed me sternly. "We're nipping this at the bud ourselves, if Shield hears of this, they'll want in on the logistics of it and try it themselves."

I nodded in agreement. "I get it, there can only be the original. As this is entirely centered around you, which isn't surprising considering your ego has its own gravitational pull, I'll follow your lead on this."

Loki gave my trashtalking a disproving look but the edges of his lips quirked up the slightest bit as per usual, he was both done with my antics and in love with them. He set the girl on her feet and let go of her neck, taking a step back and assessing his new captive. "They sent a girl, a mortal adolescent after me, either they think I've gone weak enough she could take me down or whoever they are, they're clearly insane and think they got all the answers."

"My money is on door number 2," I told him eagerly.

"You only ever bet when it's the same wager as mine or the obvious one."

I opened my mouth to argue that point but yeah that was totally true so I shut it and shrugged. "Listen Loki, I'm not the one that can summon infinite amounts of cash here, gotta get it somehow right? So what do we do with this one exactly if we're not sacrificing her to Shield?"

Loki studied the girl for a long moment before reaching out to her again, this time not like an angry snake, and pressed a palm to her forehead, a move he had told me would give him access to other's thoughts. The girl stilled as did he when he touched her and for a moment nothing happened before Loki's hand jerked away and a horrified look crossed his face as the girl gasped and opened her eyes and absolute rage dawned hers. When a dark chaotic god has that look, you know shit's about to go downhill faster than Indian food in a white person's digestive system.


	2. Chains and Whips Excite Me

"Noelle," Loki spoke tentatively for once. "When you were held by Hydra, did you hear anything of what they were plotting?"

I arched an eyebrow at him again, man, I almost forgot I was stuck with them when Loki broke me out. "Hold the fucking phone, they're still around? I thought my bodies flushed em out and ate em?" I turned to the girl then and stepped closer, next to Loki and looked her right in the eyes. "She's one of their experiments, isn't she? Like Captain Underpants' super secret soldier boyfriend."

"Something like that, yes, from the glimpses I gathered before her mind started to reject me in favor of their brainwashing," Loki confirmed.

"Which means she'll attack us if we release her, won't you?" I asked her the last part.

She glared at me. "I'll kill you first."

I cackled at her attempt to unnerve me. "Once again, chica, you're too late by a fuckton of decades at the very least, someone else that could crush you like a bug beat you to it!"

The glare turned into a morphed scowl of confusion. "I don't understand."

"Bitch, I'm dead! Shoot me, stab me, break my neck, it don't matter because I'll just fix myself and come after you, as above so below." I crossed my arms and smirked smugly at her. "You ain't gonna get far with either of us on your current mission so grab a seat and maybe a pillow if you ask nicely because as far as I'm concerned, you're gonna be here a while."

Loki had been nice enough to turn our guest room into a makeshift, sealed prison room for her because having been a prisoner himself on two and a half realms at the very least, he knew a cot or a chair as I jokingly suggested wouldn't be enough to at least butter her up for us. He tugged her inside and explained only he and he alone could unseal the room or break off the cuffs containing her and at the very least she wouldn't get any other comforts from us till she cooperated.

"They stole her, tortured her, broke her body and her mind, and then used her as a weapon, hence you seeing her targets," Loki told me later.

"That's their favorite hobby, they only got as far as the first step with me, maybe the tiniest bit of the second but that never lasted as long as they hoped, poisons, potions, a fuckton of chemical injections were literally spit back out not long after stuck in me," I told him. "Science doesn't affect the dead like Mary Shelley would have you believe."

"They didn't try magic on you?" Loki asked cautiously.

I studied his expression of concern for a moment. "If you're trying to ask me something about my time with them, ask, I've always been an open book to you and nothing really traumatic happened that I'd wanna keep inside. Also, I don't think so? Didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to what was being done on the account it did nothing in the end."

"But my magic affects you..." he stated and then a look even more concerning crossed his face. "They could be replicating that again to kill you for good. She said they need me for more."

"Cro said he made sure that only you alone had that affect, and none of them are sloppy in their job, he would've made damn sure even Hydra's spawn couldn't do that too before they were even born. Whatever they plan to do with you, doesn't lead to me or my long sought after demise. Though it bugs me they're still around, how disappointing."

Loki was quiet for a long moment in thought most likely. "You never told me what they did to you in there before I found you."

"Nothing remotely interesting, they tried to dissect me only to find I heal a hell of a lot faster than they could operate, they tried to brainwash me only to find my mind is impenetrable even to me, they tried breaking my body any way they could imagine but pain is only temporary to me, I wasn't resurrected only to be hijacked by a bunch of independent Nazis, fuck that noise. They obviously didn't like that nothing they tried worked the way they wanted, they got tired of asking how I felt after an experiment and getting snarky or violently gory answers like 'i feel like boiling your eyeballs in your skull till i can suck them out with a rusty metal straw.' No results but they didn't want anyone else to get me so they kept me sealed in and muzzled when the snark, sass, and insults couldn't be stopped by their usual methods of slitting throats or breaking jaws. So you can expect they did unimaginable things to the mortals they stole that aren't me."

"They didn't...violate you, did they?"

"They're evil but they're not necrophiliacs to my knowledge and that was one thing they learned very quickly that I was, dead inside in all the right places. So no, they took one look at the black blood they collected and analyzed and decided I was the line they wouldn't cross with their dicks...Wait, our new pet was I'm assuming since you didn't ask about that before."

Loki nodded solemnly. "As if experimenting wasn't enough to break her spirits and body."

"And yet she works for them without question."

"She has no choice, they rewrote her that way."

"Then let's give her a choice and hand her an eraser for that bad writing they've done. I'm curious though, how exactly did you find her here?"

Loki grinned then and with a wave of his hand showed me through his magical security measures of the property what transpired. It started with her scoping out our place in a casual manner before first going to the back door and attempting to pick the lock only to have the pick melted as it touched the lock, the same results for the other locks she went after, this was some perfect Home Alone shit, the first one with Kevin in his bigass Christmas themed home full of booby traps. Ha, boobies! The windows were magically sealed so she couldn't even jimmy those open when she tried. Then came breaking the windows, which resulted in whatever she used to break them with, rebounding right back at her that she was lucky enough to dodge just in time. When nothing else seemed to work, that's when it got interesting, she shifted into small animals to burrow into any place in the foundation that could lead to inside like the cellar. When she tried the chimney and was subsequently shot out of it with a smoke trail and landed hard on the ground covered in soot and transformed back to her original form, that's when Loki showed up right behind her and caught her completely off guard. She then attempted to fight him and while she packed an unnaturally strong wallop for a mortal, with fight moves and strength of good ole Captain Underpants, he still got the jump on her and snapped the cuffs on before she could shift into something that could give her an edge or escape. Loki stopped the livefeed then as it led to where we were moments ago with me racing into the house excitedly to see what he found. 

"She can fight and shift like no ordinary mortal I've met thus far, and I've met a fuckton in my prolonged afterlife," I noted. "Fights like Romanov too."

"If we release her, she will bring us unwanted attention in her attempts to extract me for them," Loki added. 

"Or she'll return to them unsuccessful and be subjected to worse than she already gets from them." I chewed my lip wondering what exactly we could do besides just keep her locked up. "How does one break a brainwashing from Hydra? How'd they do it with Bucky?"

"They ended up sending him to Wakanda to get that completely out of his system if I recall," Loki told me. "We don't have that luxury as while we did help greatly in the Infinity War, T'Challa doesn't trust me around his technology."

"That big pussy," I growled in annoyance. "So what do we do?"

"We gain her trust, show her while we can't let her go either, we aren't the bad ones. See what we can learn about her handlers and how to stop them from their plans to create more soldiers with my powers if that."

"That's all? Doesn't seem that bad, maybe we don't need Wakanda after all."


	3. Brain Food

I stood at the other side of her prison with a paper plate of food in one hand, Loki insisted it be paper as she could break a real plate and use it as a weapon, assassins were crafty that way. I looked back at Loki worriedly since he indeed was the only one to let anyone in or out of the room she was in. He nodded at me assuredly, we had already established how he would know when to let me out without cluing our captive in and attempting the same thing. He flicked a hand and a portal opened in the middle of the closed doorway that allowed me to step through it but no one from the other side could do the same as I did. She stood up from where she was sitting on the bed once I stepped through, stance rigid and wary as she watched me closely. 

"Who are you that lives with my target?" she demanded.

"I'm his wife, he liked it so he put a ring on it." I raised my left hand to show the green and gold banded wedding ring glinting with magic connected to my husband.

"He's...married?"

"I know, right? What a dreamboat and no one thought he'd settle down with a Midgardian either," I joked. "The odds were somehow in my favor there." I held out the plate for her. "We can't trust you to raid our kitchen while you're here but while we're both cold blooded naturally, we aren't monsters. Do you want me to try them first to prove they're not poisoned? Might not get it back though, they look tasty and I skipped my lunchtime fast food stop to see who broke into my home so I might just eat the whole thing myself."

She snatched the plate and guarded it like Smeagol with the ring of Sauron, stuffing her face and foregoing caution. "What do you want?"

I shrugged honestly. "Both Loki and myself are used to being hunted for one reason or another, I once had a crazy ex trash my house repeatedly in order to steal Loki's relics to use him as her personal djinn. We just want answers right now and we won't get them if we let you run back to your masters. So right now I'm curious how you were going to extract Loki under the assumption you got the drop on him somehow. He might look like a lanky glass of water but lemme tell you, he ain't as light as he looks even without the armor on. How would you get him from here to wherever you're homebase is?" I leaned back against the wall behind me and crossed my arms expectantly.

She was silent then under the pretense of eating I'd wager and just glared at me. "You're just the housewife here, I don't need to answer to you."

I sighed at this. "If I was the housewife, I would've been the one to catch you breaking in and I wouldn't be as merciful about it as Loki, I'd feed you to my cat before he knew something was going on here. You broke into not one, but two powerful immortals' home, both deities and the dead have nothing but time, you not so much. And just so you know what you're up against with this wife here." My eyes went white and I raised one hand and her last victim's lingering ghost was made visible. "I can summon all of them but the room might get a bit crowded."

She tried not to look too afraid of the bullet laden ghost in front of her. "Just an illusion."

"I had a fiancee," the ghost moaned at her. "With a baby on the way, we had been trying so hard to have one. I had just gotten the call about the gender when you shot me, I don't understand why. I'm just a doctor, I wasn't a threat to you or anyone. Why did you shoot me?"

She sucked in her breath sharply hearing that but to drive the nail in the coffin so to speak, I spoke up then. "Here's the thing about the dead I'm sure everyone knows: they can't lie."

"You must have found out about my hitlist and created this profile."

"We aren't the Avengers, we leave the snooping, spying, bad guy hunting to them and their tech because we have neither the time nor the tech for that. If you never crossed our paths in your mission, we wouldn't give you a single thought so no, while I'm sure Loki could tell your motives by how you fought him earlier, I can tell what you do simply by the number of souls stuck to yours like the one in front of you. I see them and I listen and if I can, I try to help them move on as they deserve to rest, life sucks and it never gets easier. Maybe if you answer his question at least, he will get the rest he needs, I mean can you imagine being a doctor, a lifetime alone of education before finally going out on the field, getting a severely limited amount of rest being on call all the time, watching the worst cases slip from your fingers and having to do that as a career when you put so much time and effort and training into how to fix that? That's fucking exhausting, thank the gods they get paid so well for it here, if it were England it wouldn't be worth it to me, all work and small play makes me a suicidal girl."

She was quiet, taking in everything I told her for a moment before attempting to face one of her many demons. "You knew too much, you took in a patient that belonged to us and we couldn't trust you to keep anything he said under surgery."

The ghost didn't look satisfied and looked back to me then. "I want to rest."

I smiled sadly at him and nodded, closing my eyes and lifting the veil for him to cross over. "One down, hundreds to go. I can keep doing this in front of you, one by one till it really sinks in what you've done, what you were told to do, they all have their stories, so you can either answer them or answer the more solid residents of this house that can actually give you food and protection if needed. Up to you." Of course that was when the wall behind me opened up and not realizing that cold blooded devil would use the wall instead of the door, I fell back like an idiot and out of the room. 

Loki being the smug handsome bastard that he is, easily caught me before I hit the ground with his copywritten signature smirk before pulling me up and against him for an overdramatic romantic kiss then letting me up. "I sometimes forget just how in touch with the dead you really are and then wonder how you haven't gone mad seeing it all."

"That's to be expected with your old age and all," I sassed. "Just as long as you don't forget your teeth or hearing aids."

"Insufferable Midgardian," he growled playfully. "Seriously though, the spirits, how do you keep sane with them?"

"Told you nothing can break my mind, not even me. Psychics, mediums, normal mortals that commune with them, that's a drop in the ocean of restless souls, and they only see the really agitated restless ones, I see every restless soul that hasn't crossed, with great power comes a greater audience I guess. I wasn't designed to go mad with the power though, I was designed to use it and kick ass. Besides, not every soul I see is a tragic one, Frigga for instance, she didn't linger because she desired vengeance or justice for her death, she lingered because she loved you too much to want to leave you the way she did. Sure they're all heartbreaking when you listen to them, but then my heart stopped working ages ago so that's a plus." Weaker necromancers went mad with the power and I don't mean like power hungry and make stupid decisions from it, I mean like claw out their own eyes so they didn't have to see the dead or puncture their eardrums so they couldn't hear them either, stuff that would send one straight to the nuthouse in a straightjacket with a padded room. The thing is, your bodyparts are actually filters, if you take out your eyes, instead of being blind to everything, you'll only be blind to the world of the living, but the world of the dead is still there so that will be all you'll see. Same goes for your ears, all you'll hear then is them. It's essentially why my eyes get that blind since birth look when I'm looking through worlds, its temporarily shutting out the world of the living in favor of the darker one. "Hold up, why are you suddenly now concerned about my wellbeing or lack thereof?"

"Am I not allowed to be worried for my wife's sanity? Wasn't that part of your Midgardian American vows, for better or worse, in sickness and in health?" he sassed back.

"Okay first off, we did our own vows, and mixed it with your wedding traditions, my memory might be shit but milestones like that I have a fairly good grasp on. Second of all, don't go using the marriage card on me, that's not part of the arrangement here. What's the real reason, silvertongue?"

"When I looked into her mind, I couldn't help but be reminded you were in a similar situation than she was and what I saw with her horrified me and in some dark recess of her mind, traumatized her as well but you don't react like she does at all so it makes me wonder why."

"She's also just a kid and kids are still developing, mentally and physically and thus completely adaptable and impressionable whereas I'm just a walking corpse, I've long since stopped changing and adapting, I'm just existing at this point."

"Oh you're doing so much more than that," Loki assured me before stealing another kiss. "And you can't stop me from worrying about you, I thought you'd understand that by now."

"You can't teach an old corpse new tricks, hun, thought you'd get that by now," I mimicked smugly and patted his cheek for good measure.


	4. Secret Agent Man

We watched her pace the room from Loki's magical security feed curiously. Between the black hair, pale complexion, and red eyes, she seriously reminded me a stereotypical vampire minus the fangs. And she could shapeshift like Bram Stoker's Dracula too, I wondered if I should stock up on wooden stakes and garlic. Maybe I should give her some garlic bread for her next meal. 

"Do you think Shield knows about her already?" I asked curiously, they didn't know about me when I was locked up but then they couldn't when I don't exist. This girl definitely did.

"I'd bet on it, even before I joined the Avengers, anything Hydra knew was passed to Shield when they were one in the same and she's been with Hydra most of her life, plenty of time for Shield to be in the know about her. Why, what are you plotting?"

"We don't know how long we'll have to keep her here before she's trustworthy and at the very least she's stretching out what she wants us to know which means we might need other means of getting answers than just her."

"Are you suggesting we break into Shield to find our answers?" Loki asked me in surprise.

"I'm not saying yes but I'm definitely not saying no."

"Be still my wicked heart," he purred, grabbing his chest. "And here I thought I couldn't love you more."

"I aims to please. Do we need to worry about leaving her alone here while we do that?"

"What is that old Midgardian saying? Ye of little faith."

I gave him an unamused look he often threw at me and my antics. "You should've gone with the more modern version, I find your lack of faith disturbing."

"Are you insinuating I'm Darth Vader?"

"A dark lord and master of near limitless power, corrupted by a tyrant but turned good toward the end of his dark reign of terror, if the big leather boot fits..." I shrugged with a smirk. "Since we're doing some sleuthing, I'll finally get to wear my spy suit now!"

Loki arched an eyebrow at my last statement. "Just how many costumes do you have?"

"At least one for every kind of occasion, what kind of question is that?" I replied indignantly. "It's like you don't know me at all." I pretend sulked away from him to the bedroom where my extensive walk in closet with all my outfits were stashed.

Loki studied me when I came back out ready to rock and roll and shook his head at me disapprovingly. "This is what you call a spy suit?"

"It's called steampunk fashion, sweety, look it up." I don't know why I loved the brown leather utility belts so much, but they looked so cool, so many pouches to hide so many little tools and stuff.

"Why are you wearing goggles?"

"In case science happens of course."

"If this look didn't make you more attractive to me than you already are, I'd tell you I'm going to Shield without you."

"Not bloody likely," I growled. "We doing this or not? I got a girl's trust to win and she ain't getting any younger."

"Hey, Loki, you know what the term deja vous means?" I asked as we scouted the area around the base.

"Reminds you of when we hunted down the assassins on Jotunheim," replied Loki easily.

One would think he was reading my mind with how easily he could finish or answer my thoughts but as no one including myself had full or even half access to my mind, he clearly just knew me that well that he didn't need access the magical way. If that isn't a sign we were meant for each other, I don't know what is. The base was large, heavily guarded and Loki ascertained that it was warded somehow so he sadly couldn't just poof us into where we needed to be or we'd instantly be detected at the very least if not sent somewhere we didn't wanna be. Loki also wagered that it was because of him that there was a ward there to begin with, that it was put up once he took up residence on Earth after his world was destroyed. Even after Hydra was eradicated from Shield, the organization still didn't trust anyone still part of the team. I couldn't help but feel terrible for Loki, he tried so hard to win people he originally didn't even like over, to at least be on good terms with them and they still didn't give an inch. Mortals were the stupidest, cruelest, most ignorant beings on this realm and I could say that knowing more than Midgardians now. Though on the flipside of that argument I suppose they were on the money since they made it harder for him to break in and here he is actually doing it. What those idiots didn't account for was that Loki was not only the god of loopholes but had grown exponentially stronger since they figured out how to use his magic against him so while still a pain for him to work around, it was also still doable for him to break through.

"This has Thor and Strange's work all over it," muttered Loki. "For the greater good I'd imagine Strange would say and Thor would be sold on that stupid phrase alone."

"Good ole laborathor, always happy to do tricks for meat scraps," I agreed. "Considering he hasn't gotten boned since Jane dumped him."

"You know he tried to convince me it was a mutual breakup," Loki noted.

"I'm sorry but even a virgin wouldn't buy that bullshit, nothing is mutual in a breakup, someone has to start it or be the real cause."

"You try telling that blond baby he's full of shit then, last time I tried that I almost got Mjolnir to the face, repeatedly."

"Doesn't sound that bad since he no longer has the hammer."

"He has that ugly axe now, remember. Stormbreaker, can't even call it something in our native tongue, and it's all thanks to your country assimilating him."

"Hey, this ain't on me, I don't control the living remember, that's way beyond my paygrade. I just rule the leftovers. Blame Odin for sending him here of all problematic countries to exile him on."

"Valid point."

"But if he hadn't landed here, would you have met me? Ask yourself that."

"The tesseract was here regardless of where Thor was exiled and that's where I was sent by Thanos to retrieve it, I would've still fought the Avengers and Odin would have still sent him here to help them stop me, so I believe the words you often use for this moment is: nice try."

I frowned at his flawless logic and damned smugness of it. "Stupid, clever space viking."

"Woman, what did I tell you about calling me that?"

"I should do it more often?" I smiled innocently at him and batted my eyes even. 

"Now's our chance." He gave the signal to move forward.

The main entrance was locked with retinal scanners in place and a password, that was easy enough to manage as Loki could easily figure that out between supreme intelligence and magics for the password access. While he could shapeshift into anyone, there were measures in place that would detect it's not the actual person with wards and tech combined and that's where I came in with my access to leftover bodyparts. While he was hacking the security panel to get the password, I kept occupied by casually juggling the eyes of the dead agents of the compound till he turned to grab one in midair, giving me a halfassed look of disapproval though as usual there was the small twitch of a smirk on his lips. "Barton was a better henchmen in this field than you are and he doesn't even have powers."

"You say that like an insult but despite his long grudge against you for doing that, he's still my favorite non space viking avenger."

The door clicked unlocked and an automated voice welcomed the person the eye Loki grabbed from me belonged to. I stuffed the remaining ones in one of my many leather pouches, I also had a collection of fingers just in case. I followed Loki into the building as he had memorized the layout at some point earlier, probably when he was incarcerated here before they forced him to do community service as an Avenger. Every room required some kind of identification whether it was eyes, fingerprints, or a key card Loki pretty much recreated like psychic paper out of Dr. Who, whoever was able to access it, Loki magicked onto the otherwise blank card and boom door unlocked till we found ourselves in one of the control rooms with way too much tech for me to know what to do with. Any guards in our way, Loki simply used some kind of misdirection to get their attention off us.

"Have I told you lately that I love you?" I whispered to him while he was digging through "sealed" files on the main computer.

"I could stand to hear it more but I'm curious why now."

"You're a king, a warrior, an army general, a shapeshifter, one hell of a hotass god, and a spy all wrapped in leather and gold, remind me why Thor was favored when he literally only has one bloody talent. He's like the Harry Potter of this universe, I mean expelliarmus is a decent enough defense but you can still be killed without a fucking wand."

"I believe one of the mortals on this world once said, one should fear the master of one lethal move that's done it thousands of times over a master of a thousand different moves done once. That would be my guess why my many skillsets aren't what makes me the favored one. There's also the fact that while he and I have both slaughtered many lives in our youth alone, Midgardians don't know that about Thor when I'm the only one that's gone after them." Loki went silent then which made me curious why he stopped and looked over his shoulder as best as a short person could to see what stayed his usually loose and talented tongue. 

"What a bunch of cock juggling thundercunts," I muttered.

On the screen was Loki's profile that was clearly and almost angrily stamped as potential threat. A bunch of stuff was blacked out or redacted but what I could read was still massively a dick move in my book, even though he served his time and stayed low after, he was still considered a war criminal and under surveillance, especially after returning to Midgard from Jotunheim because with his own army from another realm in the equation, in Shield's eyes he was no different than when he was with Thanos despite helping them stop Thanos. 

"After all I've done for this realm," Loki growled in barely controlled rage. "Thor had the perfect opportunity to kill Thanos when he first had the chance and failed and he's still loved by all, yet I brought the realms together to stop him completely and I'm still a threat."

Not sure what to say to calm him down, I opted for wrapping my arms around his hunched form and holding him tight. "Shield's always been a rotten bunch of cunts, Hydra infested or not. There anyway you can change that status?"

"That would take more time to hack into if possible and I don't want to be here any more than is necessary," Loki ground out. "Or I'd burn this place to the ground with everyone in it."

"I wouldn't be opposed to that, though I'd insist there be marshmallows present at least or popcorn kernels, wouldn't want all those flames to go to waste."

Loki couldn't hide the smirk then and relaxed a little bit in my arms while still searching the database for answers. "Maybe not as bad a henchmen after all."

"Who's a bad henchmen?" a new voice stated, causing both of us to stiffen and me to turn around while Loki didn't move from his position but also didn't turn to see who it was.

There stood his first henchmen with an arrow pointed at Loki and beside him was a young woman I never seen before with an arrow pointed at me, I looked from her to him to her again and raised an eyebrow. "A bit young for you, ain't she? And aren't you married?"

"She's my apprentice," Barton growled at me. "What are you two doing here?"

"Isn't it obvious, we're your new roombas, just roaming around for some dirt," I told him casually. "Were your ears burning recently? We were just talking about you. Did that tip you off?"

"We were alerted someone that was labelled deader than dead from the agency was in the building," the woman told us. "Lots of red flags there."

"Well deader is better. You wanna tell her arrows won't do much to me, her arm must be getting tired of holding it up."

"What are you doing here?" Barton demanded, ignoring my suggestion.

"Wondering why you still brand my husband a threat after he saved your planet and this entire universe from extinction."

"Hold on, you're married to Loki?!" the woman blurted out.

"I would've invited you to our wedding but in my defense I don't know who the hell you are or that you even existed till now."

"That'll be Kate Bishop," Loki informed me.

"You wanna step away from the computers," suggested Barton to Loki.

"Do I want to? Not really since you asked," Loki replied, making me smirk at him being just as sassy as me.

"Let me rephrase that then, step away from the computers or I'll shoot you where it hurts."

"You couldn't shoot me when you broke from my hold, what makes you think you will now?" Loki replied smoothly. "And when you miss, you'll further damage these computers by hitting them instead."

"At least they'd be out of your control then."

I studied the girl still intent on aiming at me. "Are you repulsed that I married Loki or that Loki married me?"

"I don't know anything about you so I'm mostly surprised anyone would want to marry that mass murderer."

"That's rich," Loki commented. "Considering you're training under one yourself and I'm not talking about the ones he killed under my control, oh no."

"Shut up before I shut you up myself," warned Barton.

"Freedom of speech, bitch." I moved myself so I now had them both aiming at me. "Might not apply to someone not from this realm but I still am and I can easily finish what Loki started."

"If you both don't shut the hell up and stop what you're doing here, then what happens next will be on you heavily."

"Isn't it always?" seethed Loki. "When I help you, I'm still to blame for any wrongdoings or mistakes you don't want to admit to doing yourself." He turned around to face them both then, knowing if he tried to look any further more trouble than he wanted would come our way.

I looked at Barton then for curiosity's sake and saw what Loki was talking about earlier and shuttered. "Nat?"


	5. True Lies

Barton let go of the arrow aimed at me and it hit me right through my chest, causing Loki to summon knives instantly. I stared down at the arrow sticking out of me and gave Barton a disapproving look.

"Oh look, an arrow, how original." I grabbed the shaft of it and yanked it out with a grunt and a spurt of black blood. "I hope you know you're not getting this back, you lost the right to it when its covered in my blood." I did however show my disgust in his actions by spitting the blood bubbling in my throat at him. "You were my favorite Avenger up till now."

"You don't get to speak her name," Barton snarled. "You don't have the right to, you weren't there."

"I speak for the dead so I have all the right to in the universe compared to you who she still lingers over, or would you rather I speak the other names of the souls that haunt you?"

"What are you? Some kind of scamming medium?" asked Bishop.

"No, those actually fall dead when they're shot through the lungs, I'm still standing so you're welcome to guess again."

"I don't have time for this, what are you doing here?" demanded Barton once more.

"Looking for answers, obviously, considering we're at the database of this place which is still standing and with no trail of bodies in our wake...yet," I told him boredly. "Just curious, found anything on me yet to profile?"

Barton was silent for a long moment. "No, nothing."

I smirked widely. "Excellent," I stated in Mr. Burns fashion. I looked to Nat once more and with just a nod at her, I let her move on but not before giving Barton a glimpse of her final afterlife form before she disappeared to the next world waiting for her. "I really should start charging for all this extra baggage I'm unloading from people."

"Did you do that with Loki?" the girl asked me.

"Well yeah, there's not a whole lot I wouldn't do for him." I leaned back against said king of Jotunheim casually and comfortable, still shielding him from their arrows in the process, not an easy thing when he's that tall and I'm decidedly not at all.

"All of them?" demanded Barton.

"There was actually only one that lingered with him, and she didn't even die by his hand. Good people seldom have souls they took themselves, so what exactly does that say about you?" The truth was it was literally just Nat that lingered, he didn't actually have any of the ones he killed himself, a good man himself. I shuttered because I definitely wasn't expecting another Avenger I liked to be with him.

"You're lying, just like him."

"The dead never lie, Barton," Loki hissed in my defense, I swear if I wasn't trying to keep Loki safe I'd be swooning at him defending me like that. "And I did warn all of you at the start what kind of people you're working for and you still did nothing and let it fall in the end. Not much has changed it seems as there's still so many dirty little secrets this organization hides from everyone including their own agents. When this sad little realm needs the help of others again and it will as there's always worse out there waiting for the one before it to fail, you remember which leader of the others you deemed fit to brand a threat to this one and see what befalls you then."

"Is that a threat?" the girl demanded.

"Brightest tool in the crayon shed this one is, Barton, you know how to pick them. He's saying your rash decision to see him as an enemy will be the reason he won't call the other realms to your aid. Why help people that will never appreciate it nor reciprocate it themselves?" I explained. "Have fun with that. He's not a threat, you are to yourselves for thinking he is. Stark really was the brains here because ever since he died, you've let your own brain cells die with him."

"Well said," Loki murmured to me proudly.

"You must be rubbing off on me, I'm usually terrible with speeches. What exactly are you planning on doing here, if we move to leave you'll shoot us but you clearly don't want us here so I'm getting all kinds of mixed signals here, shoot us or let us leave."

"Waiting on reinforcements," Barton replied stiffly.

"Don't think we're evenly matched, eh? Even though there's an equal number of both genders and teams, how delightful!"

Of course that's when reinforcements did come. With weapons naturally aimed and surrounding us, Loki easily disposed of his knives knowing if he fought his way out he'd likely be more than a potential threat to them and dig his own grave. 

"You mind explaining why you're here?" Pirate Shaft asked us as he waltzed into the room.

"We're looking for one of your many secrets," Loki responded smoothly. 

"And which one would that be?"

"One that originated from Hydra, you know, the organization that slipped into yours and gutted you like a fish in more than one way."

Fury glared at us suspiciously. "They've been flushed from our system, why would we have anything left from them?"

"That's the trillion dollar question, isn't it? Why are you still hoarding old secrets not meant for your eye, unless of course it benefits you," I noted. "And you all thought Stark was the selfish one for so long, he must have been so relieved to die for all of you hypocrites, proving you wrong and having the last word at the same time."

"You really want to go there, you weren't even there the first time he attacked us!" Fury retorted.

"Because Stark encouraged us to seek aid you clearly needed against him and was attacked on the way there, we were stranded after that, but please tell us how we weren't there for you in the end," snapped Loki. "How we didn't return with an army of our own to level the battlefield for you and that's the reason we're the enemy now!" Green magic no longer swirled around him like it usually did when his emotions were stronger, he was completely engulfed in a green inferno with all the power he had. "Stark wasn't just the brains of your brand, he was the muscle and backbone too and it took his death for you to open your eyes to see what you took for granted. How disgraceful."

"And without the best, the rest is a just a mess," I noted. "Can we leave now? This place reminds me of a Victorian sanitarium, sad, depressing and cruel."

Loki offered me his arm and the second I grasped it, we were out of the building and in Central Park. There was a long tense moment of silence between us, Loki still looking murderous and me worrying how he was handling things that came to light and trying to lock eyes with his when I gave up trying to be subtle about it and just grabbed his lapel to get him to look at me and his murderous look softened once our eyes locked. "Are you alright?"

"Am I? I should be asking you that after what you found out there?"

"They didn't shoot me though, as much as I'm sure they wanted to."

I snorted and looked at my blood stained but completely healed chest. "Tis but a flesh wound. Why didn't we poof back home?"

"While they should have no reason not to trust me, I have every reason not to trust them and couldn't be sure if they locked onto us while we were there, tracking where we go."

"How would one find out if they did?"

"Don't let go of my arm for one, I'm going to burn out any tracking and then shield us from other possible means."

I did him one better and hugged him tightly, snuggling against his armored chest and he relaxed against me once more with a small chuckle. He then tilted my chin up and stole another kiss from me, this time deeper, almost desperately that I could feel in my soul. When he pulled away, I breathed out a green puff of magic with a grin. "I'll never get used to that part. We in the clear?" Loki nodded stiffly and poofed us back to Salem, more specifically our kitchen. I caught his eyes once more and this time held his face between my hands and brought him down for one more kiss. "What are you feeling right now?"

"Rage, anguish, betrayal," he listed off gruffly. "Despair."

"We owe them absolutely nothing, we literally went above and beyond for them more times than are needed to call it even, they owe us at this point. So clearly everything you're feeling, you have every right to feel, don't let anyone or anything tell you otherwise, including me if it comes to it. Hopefully I'm not that dense to do that to you. You remember when we went on our first mission together, and I found out who was on Hydra's side?" Loki was quiet for a moment but nodded within my hands. "Do you remember what happened after I let the Avengers question the corpse?"

"You were livid, murderous even and looking to kill or break something."

"What ended up happening instead?"

"I directed your actions to me instead..."

I smirked as I watched him catch what I was hinting at. "I know how you feel and I'd support whatever actions you'd take in retaliation, I full support revenge or justice, whatever the kids are calling it these days, I'm all for it. But before you choose your next actions at them, why not try it out on me first."

"What did you have in mind then?" he asked softly.

"I'm thinking you lay back and let me treat you?"

Both Loki's eyebrows shot up at the proposal. "I don't deserve you."

"I agree, you could've done so much better than a walking corpse, loser."


	6. The Times, They are A'Changeling

"Loki, you magnificent bastard," I breathed.

The god in question simply beamed with pride as he had produced a USB drive he had managed to slip in the main computer from back at the base and steal a great deal of useful info including some on our captive, the reason why he at first didn't move from where he stood when we were found out, he was blocking their view of what he was doing and then of course the scathing speeches on why Shield sucked to stall for time so he could get as much as possible then stealthily make his move out of there. 

"Nat would be impressed," I noted at this little reveal.

"You saw her then?"

"She was Barton's ghost, his only ghost in fact."

Loki blinked at my own little reveal then frowned. "But that means..."

"What, like you're the only one around here that knows how to bluff? You might be the god of lies but you don't have all the rights to it. Although I probably wouldn't be able to go that far if you hadn't implied he already murdered people. I just went along with what you said."

"You crafty little corpse bride," he teased.

I shrugged nonchalantly. "For the greater good, right? She deserved to be at peace, I had hoped she survived the last war with Thanos, was depressing enough she never showed at our wedding when I invited her...now I know why."

"The irony is that how they met in the beginning, he was supposed to kill her, and that's how their last meeting ended, with him doing just that. For a mortal, she was formidable, I'll say that."

"Careful, hubby, your soft gooey center is showing. Wait, if we plug this thing in, won't that lead Shield to here?"

"In the unlikely event that it does, we'll sic Lady on them and see what happens next."

"You're just frothing at the mouth for a chance to fuck them over, aren't you?"

"Do you blame me?" he asked curiously.

"Neil Gaiman might but I don't, ever."

Loki smiled at me fondly and cupped one side of my face in his hand, thumb seductively brushing over my lips ever so lightly with a hint of ice. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"You kinda fell in with the wrong crowd, hun, not gonna lie, and then it was just all downhill from there really."

"Sometimes I want to chain you to the bed and keep you all to myself, away from anything and anyone that might take you from me because life without you, that is the cruelest torture I'd have ever endured."

I looked into his eyes in surprise, when Loki was being both poetic and romantic at the same time, that's not a normal thing, affectionate yes but verbally not so much. "Are you still afraid you'll lose me, after all this time?"

"Always," he breathed. 

"Well tough shit, tutz, you're stuck with me officially now, there's a reason wives are called the old ball and chain on Earth."

Loki took my left hand then and kissed my ring finger though not the ring itself as he was still of course a king himself and couldn't do that when I declined that kind of power myself. "The one time I'd ever accept being in chains then."

I grinned widely, imagining him in chains completely at my mercy, it wasn't terribly often he was in that position with me though he did try it a few times just to spice things up but it should come to no one's surprise he enjoyed being a dom just a tad bit more and since I first laid eyes on that hot, sweet piece of god candy I've never had much to complain about. "I'd better feed our new pet."

"It was quiet for a while, did you leave me alone here?" she demanded when Loki let me through to her room.

"Why, did you miss me?" I teased, handing her another plate of food, yes, with garlic bread as part of the platter.

"I got hungry in your absence." She snatched the food and scarfed it down like I hadn't fed her earlier or even that week when she hadn't even been here a week but then it was entirely possible she didn't get fed before she got here, Hydra weren't known for being generous captors in my personal experience. They tried feeding me once or twice but despite not being affected by tampered food unless its been spiked with booze and not drugs or poison, I decided not to give them the satisfaction of even trying whatever canned crap they came up with. 

"If you won't tell me your name at least, I'll be forced to make them up and Loki can attest how ridiculous they can be," I warned. "Seems only fair since you already know his."

"I don't know you though," she said with a mouthful of food.

"I'm Nell Laufeyson, still not used to having a last name but that's what it says on the marriage papers. Wife of Loki Laufeyson, owner of Lady Catalie, necromancer, and an American woman." I gestured to her to return the favor.

"They called me Changeling but my name is Evelena."

"Do you prefer the whole name, Eva or Lena?" I asked curiously.

She stared at me with either a shocked or a blank expression, I couldn't be sure. "I've never been given a nickname before. I guess I like Lena more then."

"Lena it is then. While you're here, you should know, we aren't bad guys. We don't want to hurt you or be sadistic or malicious, not especially without good reason for it at the very least. Trust is something both Loki and I value over just about anything as we've both had our fair share of betrayals and are just done with people doing that to us. I want to trust you myself but you can understand why we can't since we found you trying to break into our home. It's not me you should worry about though, it's Loki, he's had far longer experience dealing with betrayal, spies, and sabotage and I'm sure he's had a target on his back longer than I have and he's the one you were breaking into our home for so if it's anyone's trust you should earn for your freedom, it's his." I threw her a wink and the second my hand touched the nearest wall, I tumbled through it yet again in a not remotely graceful way. "You're doing it on purpose at this point."

"How else will you fall for me?" Loki purred with a smirk.

I glowered at the clever bastard and brushed myself off. "Bad jokes and clever puns are my thing, get your own damn thing."

"Why don't you make me?" he challenged, the smirk still in full.

"I've got better things to do. Her name is Evelena by the way, codename Changeling, hopefully we can find something on her from what you downloaded."

"Changeling? If I recall correctly, that's the name of a fae that's switched with a child stolen by them."

I blinked and arched an eyebrow at his very accurate description of that term. "Someone's a folklore nerd." Though something about remembering that description tugged at the back of my mind, like I needed to remember that specifically for some reason. 

"I'm a sorcerer and a scholar, I'll have you know."

"Sounds like double the nerd to me."

"Listen here, you thawed out little Night Queen," he growled, but before he could finish that half assed insult/threat, Lady Catalie came charging right at him and let me tell you, no kitty can jump or parkour like an alien/Cthulhu kitty as she leapt right for his face and knocked him off his feet unexpectedly.

I leaned over him with a smirk as he was attempting to get Lady off him without much success. "I'm listening..."


	7. You Got A Friend In Me

I had been very fortunate to have the Avengers themselves find me in Hydra's clutches, obviously more than fortunate that Loki found me first but still a good thing it was orchestrated by the Avengers as they operated differently than Shield. They may have indeed flushed out Hydra from its core but it still was dangerously similar to how Hydra operated it seemed. They claimed to work for the innocent, the civilians, and the greater good but that was a front, it had to be because what Loki and I did to help defeat Thanos, bringing the other realms together and figuring out how to reach Midgard in time to stop him, that was all for the greater good. So if they see us as a threat even after all our greater goodness, that's gotta mean that they are the actual threat to us and aren't there for the greater good. I wondered how Thor would react to this theory. He seemed to like Shield and he was probably the most honorable of the Avengers, unfortunately, he was off having adventures with his new friends he had found or had found him in our absence, that wanker. Back to my previous revelation, if just Shield found me in Hydra's clutches, I'd probably no better off with them. They'd try to figure out how I tick, how to categorize me, how to replicate what I am, and refuse to let me leave till they could find a way to control me which would be never. I'm sure at some point, Shield was actually doing the job it claimed it was there for but ever since Hydra infiltrated it, it had become a rotten bunch of lies and spies. The Avengers, what was left of them anyway, were the better bunch of protectors, it really sucked the best members were gone. I did kinda warm up to Bucky though but that might be because he was a lot like Loki and anyone who didn't like Loki was deaf, dumb, and blind. Mr. Rogers once stated they don't trade lives but if that wasn't the case, I'd have happily traded Little Red Flying Witch for Nat any day or the dude with a metal wing pack on his back for Tony because how the hell is a wing pack better than a continually evolving body armor, seriously?

"We should have Bucky over," I stated to Loki while we were going through the downloaded files.

"Why him?"

"He might be able to help with the whole Hydra brainwashing thing, give us some tips or insight, and also he seems like a cool guy."

"Or you have a thing for dark haired dark souled men with a villainous past," Loki pointed out dryly.

"Njord wasn't villainous...was he? I don't actually know much about him besides what you told me and what I read in Norse mythology."

"I'm sure Odin tried to paint him that way at one point because Norns forbid a king or even a man of the realms use magic as a primary defense method, but not to my knowledge so you have one, just one instance of that not being the case. However, as you Midgardians would say: exhibit A." He gestured to himself with an arched eyebrow.

"Do you even know what that reference means?" I retorted.

"Objection."

I frowned at his clever reply, of course he knew, dude claimed he'd been here on and off longer than I've been alive or dead walking here. "So can we?"

"He's probably too busy messing around with Rogers' replacement."

I wrinkled my nose at that thought, I really didn't like the Falcon, at least when you took away Tony's tech armor he was still 100% awesome in everything else he was good at, but if you took away the wings of that other dude, what was left? No genius, billionaire, playboy or philanthropist, that's for damn sure. "Then we gotta make it worth his while."

"If you're implying what I think you're implying, I strongly suggest you remembering your vows and the fact I don't share what's mine."

"I cheat at games and life, but not at love, also, and more importantly I'm pretty sure he swings for the other team as it's pretty damn clear how he feels about Rogers."

"And Rogers returned here finally looking his age and married to his wartime sweetheart so he's no longer an option for Bucky."

"Are we seriously having a discussion on Avengers lovelives? I'm not going to shag Bucky, you're the only Avenger into dead things remember. We need his experience so call him over you wanker."

"Well when you put it like that so nicely," he mocked. "How are you so certain we need him and can't figure her out ourselves?"

"Do tell, how have you planned to get her to trust you enough to tell you everything without her shutting you out, attacking you or everything blowing up in our face?"

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

I cackled at this as he even mimicked James Earl Jones deep voice, he was that extra. "Truth hurts. Need something more exciting," I sang back. "With green lighting, and a space viking."

Bucky was definitely a specimen, that was also for damn sure though he could do with a haircut but the rest of him was damn near perfect for a human at least. I hadn't seen him since our wedding and to say I was surprised he came would be an understatement as we literally met in the middle of a war, made some small talk during Tony's funeral, and that might actually be the extent of meeting. He wasn't as resentful or distrustful of Loki as the other Avengers, maybe he emphasized with him or maybe he just didn't have all the facts and was on ice during the original invasion so it didn't really affect him but it was a bit refreshing all the same. I fixed him a drink and some snack foods when he walked into our home, looking around with an expression of somewhat contained wonder if not of being impressed.

"Never been to Salem before," he muttered while sipping his drink. "Is it being a tourist trap a new thing?"

"The Witch Trials happened during the era of Puritans so that much is ancient for us humans at least, but I think it really got people's attentions in the 80's and 90's, pure anarchy during Octobers especially, you're invited to our annual Halloween party of course," I explained happily.

Bucky smiled in thanks. "So how can I help you two?"

I chewed my lip nervously and realized I hadn't even planned out what to say to him about needing his help and didn't know how to tell him we caught another Hydra victim like him and don't know how to fix her. "So this teenage chick tried to break into our house recently, Loki caught her, interrogated her as to why she was doing it and found out she's a Hydra experiment sent to take him back with her. She's been locked in our guestroom, we feed her, give her clean clothes, a bed, essential comforts but I don't know what else to do."

Bucky was silent for a long moment, staring at me trying to absorb what I just told him. "How do you know?"

"Loki looked into her memories and he showed me footage of her shapeshifting meaning she's not your average Josephine."

"That branch especially was destroyed so whoever sent her, I can personally assure you it wasn't Hydra, Steve and I made damn sure of it. Though I can believe she was an experiment from them, someone else must have gotten her and continued what they started," Bucky informed me.

"I'm not calling you a liar but are you absolutely sure it's not Hydra we'll be dealing with regarding her, I mean they're like weeds in a lawn, you spray one side with weed killer and they'll just grow where you missed."

"Doll, if I'm wrong you have my permission to rip off my shiny metal arm and beat my head in with it."

"But...that would ruin a perfectly good face and there's already a shortage of that going around," I moaned. "Okay so it's not Hydra, who or what would want Loki's blood to make mindless soldiers? Any other evil organizations that you'd know of?"

"She not giving you those answers?"

"Loki tried it the mean way, I tried it with food bribery, she's more evasive than a longtailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, I'm not entirely sure she knows who they are either, Loki was very very persuasive and he couldn't figure it out then or when he read her memories. He just knows Hydra started her."

"If she's been brainwashed the same way I was, she'd have trigger words which although largely inhumane to use, would at least make her answer you directly and honestly. How old is she?"

"Somewhere between 17-19 I think, can't be sure without cutting off a leg and counting the rings in it."

Bucky chuckled at my lameass joke. "Well consider me invested in this, anything you can give me that I could track and find leads to?"

"Her codename is Changeling, but she says her real name is Evelina."

Bucky nodded, hopefully committing it to memory. "Keep chipping away at her walls, positive reinforcement and all that good stuff. Whoever is using her for that mission will probably have instilled some kind of fear if she fails, most likely fear of their wrath or cruelty in other ways which means you gotta break that mindset with her first for her to trust that you aren't like them. Give her enough space to mess up or make a mistake but don't lash out or punish her for it."

"Kill her with kindness, got it. And thank you for helping us, I'm sure you had more important things to do with your time."

"Like what? Play frisbee with Sam and his new shiny shield?" Bucky mocked. "It's the least I can do for you two after what you did for this planet let alone the universe."

"Glad you think so, others still think we're a threat to it."

"Who?"

"Starts with S, rhymes with field, whole bunch of people under that word."

Bucky almost choked on his drink figuring out that super simple riddle. "Seriously?!"

"People with the shortest lives can hold the longest grudges I've noticed," I noted. "That's mortals for you."

"Well you're good in my book if that means anything, I'll see what I can dig up for you, I got your back, Jack. Tell Loki I said hello and he's got a friend and an ally if he ever needs one." He set his plate and drink down and I walked him to the door and gave him a hug because he always looked like he needed it. "Thank you for letting me in on this."

I shrugged leisurely. "Wouldn't know anyone better for the help." I watched him hop on Steve's old motorbike before turning back to Loki who had materialized after Bucky walked out. "Look who got a new friend!" I squealed. "Couldn't be any prouder, promised myself I wouldn't cry." I pretended to wipe away tears from my eyes in an effort to hide the shit eating grin I had on. 

"If he betrays us like Shield has..." Loki warned.

"Let me guess, you'll kill him? I'm sure he'll have to wait in line for that."

"It's times like these I'm eternally glad you've never met Lady Sif, she's have your head for saying that to her like I had," Loki told me.

"Did she survive Ragnarok?" I asked curiously.

"She was on a mission during it, offworld somewhere I know not, last I heard she was in New Asgard in Thor's stead."

"She's the chick that pined after him, right? Not the mortal, the warrior?"

Loki nodded with a small smirk. "That she is. I take it you're not fond of her either."

"If she didn't like or trust you her entire life, there's really no reason I should. I've known you a fraction of the time she has and trust you with my afterlife."

"Not quite the same thing as there was no love between her and I, like there is with us. If there's no such love, there's much less reason for there to be trust with me."

I rolled my eyes at his reasoning and grumbled to myself about Loki and his fine print. "I want to kick her ass if I ever get the chance to meet her."

"Be careful what you wish for, my love," he purred.

"Yeah yeah, I've read the Monkey's Paw, and tales of djinns, relax." I had just about everything I needed and wanted anyway, I did however still want answers. "You're the only magical man I'd rub one out for."


	8. Kid Tested, God Unamused

We, much to Loki's chagrin, agreed to follow Bucky's instructions and let her out of the room and into a select few other room to stretch her legs, give her some change in scenery, and of course to use the bathroom if she needed. The objective was to see how far we could trust her if we gave her some freedom and where to go from there. Once she realized the door to her room was unlocked, she very slowly and cautiously opened it the slightest bit and peaked out. I felt like Dr. Evil or Dr. No, watching her snoop around my home on a monitor with my cat in my lap. I would've let Lady guard the door and keep an eye on her but there was no guarantee Lady wouldn't eat her if she was doing more than harmless snooping and also Loki wanted to be the one to catch in any unsavory act if that happened, he felt she was his responsibility as she came for him specifically and he was the one that caught her. Once she was certain she could in fact walk out of the room safely, she quietly walked down the hall and tried the doors to a few other rooms that were sealed just to keep her out, there wasn't anything of much value in them we just didn't want her in there, our house our rules. Or maybe this was more like that ancient 90s computer game where you control a mouse in a giant maze to find cheese before you're eaten by the cat. As always, Loki would be the cat and she was the mouse, but then what would that make me? Does that even matter when all I could think about was Loki preparing to pounce with the calculating butt wiggle cats do pre pounce mode? Seriously, picture that fine behind...now picture it wiggling. You're welcome for installing that glorious gif in your head. 

She stopped at the bathroom and stared in the mirror for a long moment before turning on the faucet and cleaning her face with a washcloth, attempting to tame the mane of black hair as well then moving on to another unlocked room. If she wasn't designed as a weapon and people were willing to look past the vampiric eyes, she could've been one gorgeous goth. When she finally reached the kitchen, the room we were indirectly directing her to, she paused and her eyes flitted between the knife block and the fridge, a hard decision I've often been faced with when hangry, do I want to eat first or stab someone, decisions decisions. Depends what's in the fridge for me. She made a move to reach for a soda bottle but stopped herself for some reason and closed the fridge door and went for the knife block that not so mysteriously vanished as she went to grab the butcher knife. 

"This was a test," she murmured in disappointment and looked around her with narrowed eyes. "Where are you?"

"I built this house myself so naturally I am everywhere within it," Loki replied though he was pretty much just shadowing her the entire time she had left her room.

She tried to swipe at him with a fist but missed entirely as he easily stepped away and let her try and figure out where he was to no avail. "Where is your wife then?"

"She's in another room watching all this from my security system, I wanted to personally see how far I could trust you." Loki shimmered into view behind her and fixed her with a warning glare. "I would've asked if we weren't feeding you enough had you chosen wisely."

I could almost see the simpering rage steaming from her. Or if you're into anime, that little red plus sign thing popping up on her head somewhere, whatever that's supposed to be? "So what is this exactly? Good cop bad cop or you're the man of the house and she's just the cook that feeds me here?"

Loki looked at where he knew the magical lens feed would be to look directly at me watching all this with an unamused look on his face before looking back at her. "We are neither law enforcers nor is this a monarchy or patriarchy but you have no interest in her, I've taken it upon myself to find out why exactly you need me." He summoned a knife, not one of his daggers but a pretty generic kitchen knife probably from the vanishing block and examined the edge curiously. "If you were able to obtain this, what then?" He gave her a mischievously challenging look. "Would you try to use it on me? It wouldn't even pierce though the leather let alone my own skin." He was mocking her at this point which is spraying a stream of gasoline on a bonfire if you're a headstrong teenager looking to prove herself. "I'm curious just how a young mortal like you could hope to contain me when it took a whole group of fully grown mortals to do that before."

She screamed in a fit of rage and lashed out at him with powerful, well placed moves that no ordinary teenager could perform although Loki easily dodged or blocked them, one or two hitting the mark but didn't so much as leave one on him. Anything she tried to grab as a weapon vanished the instant she touched it so she was forced to just use her hands and feet against him till he had her cornered but rather than simply knocking her out to stop the squabble, he did a less affectionate but still harmless "death cuddle" by more or less grabbing hold of her arms, forcing them against her chest and holding her taut against himself as she struggled and thrashed and kicked against him. 

"I know no one enjoys hearing this and it seldom works when spoken but you need to calm down or you'll hurt yourself," he murmured from behind her.

"Let me go!" she screamed but seemed to slowly stop fighting against him.

"You know we can't do that and you know why."

"Then why did you let me out of the room?!"

I stepped out of the room I was watching everything in then which was conveniently right near the kitchen. "Because we figured you'd wanna stretch your legs a bit and we wanted to see what you would do with any freedom given. You're lucky this ain't the south where people are allowed to shoot anyone on their property without repercussions."

Loki looked over at me then with surprise. "That's a law in certain states?"

I gave him an incredulous look. "It's the south, what did you expect? They're practically their own country down there."

"You Midgardians are an unruly bunch of savages."

I snorted in agreement. "You'll get no argument from me there, I'm fully aware we're still hairless apes throwing shit at each other and you were dumb enough to marry one, guess you can tick both necrophilia and bestiality to frowned upon things to stick your dick in."

"If I wasn't otherwise occupied holding someone else in place..." he warned.

I smirked wickedly. "Promises promises. Right then, Lena. While we're still in the kitchen, are you in fact hungry or thirsty, is there anything we can get you that will make you more comfortable while we keep you here?"

She stopped wiggling against Loki altogether now that the attention was back on her. "You're offering me things? After I tried attacking your husband?"

"He can clearly take care of himself, doesn't need me punishing people for him if it's called for, which it isn't. But yes, I'm offering because I might be dead but I'm not a monster and you are our guest after all."

She was quiet for a moment. "Could I have some chips?"

"Tortilla, sour cream and onion, or Cape Cod?"

"Cape Cod, please."

I grinned and nodded. "They're already at your room waiting for you, whole bag unopened in case you were worried we laced it with something. We don't do that here, the only lacing is on naughty undergarments and steampunk cosplay, promise."

"I'm fairly certain she didn't need to know about your panties, Noelle," Loki informed me.

"I'm fairly certain you should send her back to her room," I countered with an arched eyebrow.

"Vexing little vixen," he mused before poofing her to her room and then back again. "How'd you know she would pick that flavor of chips?"

"It's the least dehydrating of the flavors, I could devour an entire bag and maybe need like one gulp of water whereas the other two not so much. Have you tried them, yet? They're the best."

"We live in Massachusetts, of course I've tried them and yes I tried the lobster bisque flavored one before you ask."

I glared at the confident cock of a god that somehow was one step ahead of my thinking. "A simple yes would've sufficed."

"Satisfaction isn't in my nature."

"Of course it isn't, being a smug bastard apparently is though, who would've thought."

"You like me that way."

"You sure that's why I like you? Is that your final answer?" I crossed my arms and gave him my best challenging look.

"How many times do I have to prove you wrong before you finally admit I'm always right?"

"Do you want the truth or what you want to hear?"

His look of determination melted into a smirk as his tough facade failed him. "Cara mia."

"Mon cher, I love you more than all the bats in all the caves and belfries," I replied smoothly.

"Why wasn't that in your vows?"

"You're lucky I didn't go Bridezilla and demand a completely gothic, halloween themed wedding like I dreamed of since I was reborn."

"That's something people do on Midgard?"

"Darling, you have no idea what's possible for weddings."

"Why didn't we do that then?"

"The ceremony isn't all about me, it's about us, two hearts not one remember, thus it should be celebrated and enjoyed by both equally, not one above the other, that comes after the ceremony when the guests leave."


	9. Minds Over Matter

"You do know, that if we involve Bucky in our plans here, we could essentially be turning him against the people he once stood for and by," Loki warned me.

"That's nothing new for any of us including him," I replied softly. "We've all been betrayed in some form or another or had our eyes opened to the worst and forced to change our views on things from that. As long as he knows exactly what he's getting into, it's entirely his choice what to do next. We aren't forcing him, twisting his organic arm, or brainwashing him into doing anything, same for the kid."

Loki nodded in agreement. "Sometimes I wish I met you when Asgard was still standing and I hadn't fallen from it."

"Because great minds think alike and you were surrounded by idiots back then?" I guessed.

Loki stared at me like I could read minds which would be a neat trick for someone that hates the living, imagine the damage I could do fucking with people's minds. 

"You think I don't listen when you talk about your days of old and how terrible your brother and his friends were, but I could listen to you read off Webster's Dictionary and not get bored." To emphasize my point, I propped my head on both hands, elbows propped up on the dining room table were situated at and stared at him dreamily. "Despite my constant commentary and jokes, I'm a decent listener depending on who I'm hearing."

"You are the only thing good that's come of all the things this wretched realm has given me, do you know that?" he told me.

"Should hope so, you're now legally bound to this one good thing you found here." I held up my left hand and flashed him my gorgeous gold and emerald wedding ring. "I know your mother would be proud of you, I wonder what the old dead cyclops would think of this whole adventure between us."

"He'd want you dead and me miserable, I'd wager, you'd no doubt remind him too much of his first failure in parenting and think you were a threat to all the realms and then throw me back in the cell for transpiring with such a threat."

"I'd just break you out then, like you did when you found me in the beginning. I don't care how powerful he was, nothing in this verse can stop me from keeping you. Not him, not his friends, not Odin, I would destroy your realm myself if it meant getting you out. Demons couldn't keep you from me, a bunch of sorceresses couldn't keep me from you."

"I think that was one of the most impressive attacks I've seen from you, you incinerated them into ash. Why didn't you do that with Thanos though or his children?"

"It's not exactly my go to move on the battlefield, while I'm pretty indestructible, I really don't want to be stabbed or shot at in the face when I'm getting that close to my target to reach into their chest. I also wanted the children I killed to suffer first and while grabbing a soul is inexplicably painful, not quite the same feel. I wanted them to bleed or spill their guts and I wanted them to look me in the eyes while I'm doing it."

"Why? You never met any of them."

"You did though." I left it at that and looked Loki in the eyes so he knew exactly why without me having to go in detail. 

"That was all for me."

I nodded. 

Loki took my hand from across the table, fingers brushing over my knuckles before squeezing them in thanks. "My angel of vengeance."

I grinned widely at the new name. "Hell hath no fury like a wrathful woman that can raise hell itself."

"The other Horsemen, have you ever met them or will that only ever happen in the end?" Loki asked randomly.

"I'll know them when I see them but I've no memory of meeting them before, however that says very little about the truth as I don't have much of a memory of most things that's happened to me so who's to say really." I shrugged and gathered a bunch of food on a paper plate along with a bottle of water for our guest. 

She was laying back on the bed staring at the ceiling blankly as I stepped through the little portal Loki created for me to go into the room. Upon seeing a plate of food come through first, she sat up and this time actually waited for me to come through and hand it to her instead of the usual grabbing it out of my hand as I stepped through. 

"You're used to this, aren't you? Being contained with nothing to do but eat and receive orders."

She paused mid chew and slowly nodded but didn't elaborate or speak up about it.

"I can relate to that, especially with it being Hydra. Was locked in a glass cell for what turned out to be five years. Bored out of my mind, only entertainment I had to keep from going mad was making the agents go mad with my commentary instead. Of course that's when they put on the muzzle and all bets were off."

"Why did they keep you locked up?" she asked curiously.

"I'm a necromancer, meaning I can control the dead and an army of zombies is a lot more manageable than an army of living, bleeding, breathing things that get exhausted or killed or just plain beaten down in battle. So naturally, they wanted that too. Thing is, my gift isn't something that can be copied or stolen or shared, that's not how I was designed, to share. If I have something of value, nobody gets it ever or I will rip their fucking soul out of their chest with my bare boned hands. Hydra learned that the hard way, first when I was freed from them and then when they tried to take both me and Loki again, I killed anyone that thought they could contain me and keep me from what's mine." I looked her dead in the eyes then. "If it's my powers, my freedom, my pets, or my husband, I will destroy anyone that thinks they deserve them most than me. Now I know you personally aren't responsible for going after my husband, you're just the delivery girl here. That's why you're still alive right now, we know you're not really the one that wants him, but we do need to know who is."

"If I tell you, they'll kill me."

"How will they know you did when you're secured in here?" I countered with an arched eyebrow. "How will they kill you when they'll be too busy being killed by us? We know it's not Hydra anymore, where did you go after that was dismantled?"

"I was sedated and sent to another facility, I don't know where it's location."

That could prove troublesome for finding them and taking them down but hopefully we'd find that out in the flashdrive Loki filled with goodies. "Lena, we can protect you if they come after you as well, we aren't in the habit of killing teenagers, just humiliating or scaring off ones that piss us off by being asshats. We aren't your enemy here, we won't abuse you, hurt you, torture you in any way if you've fucked up, you're only human that's kinda your nature really. Look at me, look in my eyes. If you help us, we can help you in turn." I held out a hand to her in a gesture of open trust and possible friendship. "Both Loki and I have been in similar positions as you once were, we understand you're in a really bad position with very few options that even fewer have good results. But at the very least you might wanna consider who really has the upper hand and better chance of surviving, you have on one hand a king of an entire realm of giants that had at one point nearly turned this planet to ice and his wife who can raise the dead just by asking nicely and the dead will always outnumber the living. And then you have your handlers, whoever or whatever they are and however many there are total which I'm willing to bet are at least 75% mortal humans if not all of them." I pretended to physically weigh the two opposing sides with a smirk on each hand.

She looked even more uncertain which was not my intended goal and almost in pain because of it and that had me even more worried as I had just promised not to hurt her. "They'll find me, they'll find me and wait till the opportune moment to kill me the one time I'm not protected but alone and vulnerable."

I chewed my lip in thought, while unlikely there was still a slim but definite possibility of a rogue agent of this organization on the loose and keeping an eye on her to tie up loose ends. "Then we teach you to protect yourself so in the event we aren't there for you, you can protect yourself."

She was silent for a moment, weighing the options again in her mind most likely. "You'd do that?"

"Why the hell would we waste good food on someone we don't want around long term?" I asked in turn. "Especially my favorite chips. Well them and Trader Joe's pumpkin chips."

She couldn't hide the smile tugging on her lips and hesitantly gripped my still outstretched hand firmly in hers. And exciting chill went up my arm then, this could be the start of something fun and beautiful.


	10. The World Is A Vampire

After much discussion, we decided to really dig into the contents of the flashdrive at a public, very busy setting as while Loki was convinced our house was the safest place he could think of, I was convinced Shield could still track us via the flashdrive, they were nearly as thorough as the Supremes in their own jobs and defense was part of their anacronym for a reason. A library was the first suggestion as it had great wifi and was always full of students and introverts but we both agreed there was a definite potential for books to be ruined if we were tracked there and it would scare off the introverts in their natural habitat which was never a good thing when there's so few of their natural habitats available to them. We decided on a mall which proved to me how out of touch with the times I still was because I clearly remembered going to those when I was slightly less dead and there being lots of people in every single store in them but I guess thanks to modern tech and amazon prime, internets was the way to shop to the masses. On the plus side, there'd hopefully be less casualties should things get squirrely but that might prove to our disadvantage as we kinda needed there be enough people to blend in unnoticed.

"What is this depression building?" Loki murmured as we stepped into a JCPenny's.

"This is making me feel really really really old, I immediately regret this decision," I replied. "Maybe there's still a few decent restaurants open we can grab a table and a to go meal." On the way to the food court of course, I had to stop at one particular store that called to me after gods know how many years since I last set foot and just kinda stopped and stared into its black and red abyss. "Hello Hot Topic, my old friend, I've come to walk by you again."

Loki of course arched an eyebrow at me being ridiculously nostalgic as that wasn't something someone with little memory of their past could do most of the time and peered at the store curiously, trying to see what I was seeing. "I thought you didn't like being pegged as someone adorned in all black all the time."

"I didn't like Hydra pegging me as a grim reaper, the clothes they gave me was itchy, tacky, and did nothing for my ghoulish figure. Also I'd like to think I'm a more upbeat reaper despite my dark humor. Kinda have to wear black though, no other color can hide the blood better."

"Or you could just not bleed so much," Loki teased.

"Dude, you do not ever tell a woman not to bleed or it will be your blood we'll be cleaning up later with no evidence leading back to us," I warned lightly.

"Oh how I love it when you taught dirty to me," he purred.

I smirked wickedly and forced myself not to just go in the store to buy superhero or band merch and check out their newest Funko Pop limited edition collection. That store was it's own addiction, once you go in, you never come back out. We picked a table close to an exit and where it had the most people seated, grabbed some greasy fried food and soda, and logged into the mall's wifi with a cheapass laptop Loki snagged from someone wasn't paying close enough attention to while talking to someone from another table. Idle hands are Loki's playthings. Loki expertly downloaded everything he could from the flashdrive onto the laptop, then when that was done went about picking what we figured would be important to keep to download onto another flashdrive we procured from the tech shop in the mall. First thing, he went about collecting on the new drive was everything it had on himself, all the footage, notes, files, everything about him they had collected since Thor showed up on Earth and Loki sent the Destroyer after him to the Battle of the Glove as I had called the war we last fought. Then he went about trying to find anything on me, not a whole lot I was betting but I was too busy munching on fried chicken to really notice his findings then. Then he searched for two names, Evalena and Changeling. That's when things got interesting for us. Hydra had her a lot longer than they had me, her parents long gone, one killed by Hydra, one disappeared of "mysterious circumstances". They took her when she was an actual kid, not even a tween. While her body was still growing and developing, they experimented first, trained after. One thing that didn't add up was her actual age though, it showed pictures of her at her youth but the stamp date was more than a few decades ago, meaning they either put her on ice like Shield did with Steve and Hydra did with Bucky or they injected her with something that slowed her aging down to almost a grinding halt.

There was a lot blacked out or redacted too, like her actual age, the names of her parents, even her own last name for some reason, personal things and what exactly they experimented on her with. One thing was clear though in the files, whatever their plans for her were, they at least believed they succeeded in it. The powers they hoped for with experimentation in her were active, the training completed. Maybe they figured out how to make a vampire from science and not dark magics, not only does she have bloodred eyes, quicker reflexes than humanly possible, and can shapeshift, she doesn't age either, totally a vampire. Wish I could recall if she ate the garlic bread I fed her before. If she sparkles in the sunlight though, I'm grabbing the biggest, sharpest stake I can find, toss the rule of no killing children aside just this once, and shoving that piece of wood through her chest. Because that's how you kill a fucking vampire and that's what should've happened to that god awful mini series of novels/movies. Have Buffy Summers and Blade tag team those sparkly ass bitches in a blaze of badass glory. That's the ending we all deserved, not some creepy ass looking Dhampir baby imprinted on a wolf shapeshifter. Kinda makes me glad I can't have kids, could you imagine what mine would look like, cold blue stillborns that aren't as still as you'd think. Would they still want milk if they're sorta dead? Don't think I'd be able to give them any from myself or maybe my body would adapt to childbirth by producing whatever the demon child needs. Why the fuck does Loki love me again? I mean at first glance, if you're a ways away and squinting I look like a pretty decent woman but thats a ruse. Like the light on an angler fish to lure in unsuspecting gorgeous gold and green gods to their doom of unholy matrimony. Fun fact, those freaky fucked up fish are a hellova lot bigger than I would've ever guessed, Finding Nemo did not do their size justice at all. This is why we haven't mastered space travel yet, we have more than enough monsters and the unknown in our own bloody oceans and could barely handle any and all alien life forms that crossed Earth's path, we know when to tap out. Most of the time anyway.

"Why did Shield blackout all that stuff?" I wondered out loud. "Claim they're the top tier of security so that should mean they themselves believe no one can find out their secrets."

"Except Stark who has proven to do that almost as a second nature when he catches wind of their bullshit," Loki noted.

"Ah Tony," I mused sadly. "That clever bastard. Made damn sure he passed onto the great beyond after he died, he deserved his eternal rest after all he's done for this realm."

"Almost a shame our first real meeting I tossed him out a window," Loki recalled fondly.

"Well you did break into his personal building to open a portal, seems a bit rude when there's a fuckton of other less hero-y buildings to choose from."

"You know that was my plan all along, love, I needed to grab the heroes attention quick and careful so they would be able to stop the worst from happening, it worked exactly how I hoped it would. Minus what transpired when I was sent back to Asgard."

I nodded in agreement. "Naturally. Is there anything useful about Lena yet?"

"Unnaturally strong, shapeshifter, blood red eyes, inhumanly sharp senses, quicker reflexes," he listed off. "Slow aging."

"Don't say it, if you say vampire I'm going to stab you with a blackthorn stake just for good measure."

"Those actually exist here?"

"I mean, we already have aliens, gods, andromorphic murderous purple grapes in armor, necromancers, demons, evil exes, and zombies, none of us should be surprised if there's vampires abroad. I've never met one personally, was warned they were dangerous even to me."

"Why is that?"

"They're made of the worst concoction imagineable for a necromancer, a dead body possessed by dark and demonic magic and you saw how lethal demonic things can be to me, exhibit A hellhounds."

"But it's not like they'd be after you when they only feed on the living according to myth, right?"

"This is true, but I'd wager they wouldn't be after me for food but for power, they already have a certain power over the living but to be able to have power over both the living and the dead, they'd be unstoppable."

"Would that be possible though, to get that power from you? You always say how it can't be stolen or copied and it doesn't come from your blood."

"If certain Chaotic beings tell me to stay the fuck away from something, I bloody well listen and follow, he may be sadistic but he's not stupid."

"And you wouldn't be able to stop a vampire yourself with them being undead?"

"There's a much greater risk in trying that, greater still if said vamp is ancient and thus powerful as it's about who's power is strong enough to overthrow the other, it's like I explained way way back, takes more effort to wake the dead that are well rested and don't feel like getting out of bed or that don't want to wake for the reason you gave them. Obviously a vamp isn't gonna just go along with what you want them to do, so they're going to resist and then they're going to fight back."

Loki was quiet for a long moment, taking everything in that I told him. "Did you compare the Mad Titan to a common colored fruit?"

"My bad, I meant raisin since he's all dried up now."

Loki shook his head in amusement at me but it quickly dissolved in a scowl. "They're here."

"The Nazgul or the TV people, that's a very generic reference."

"As you suspected, they put a very subtle tracking virus well hidden in the data we stole from them, and it's led them to us."

I couldn't help but smirk then and crossed my arms over my chest. "So what I'm hearing is I'm right and picked a better place to be tracked to."

Loki rolled his eyes at me and dimensionally pocketed the flash drive for safe keeping in the hopefully unlikely event he was caught and searched for it. "You were right one time, just the one!"

"Gotta start somewhere, don't I?"


	11. Women Without Hats

To anyone that wasn't used to them, they looked like ordinary people dressed in ordinary clothes, nothing that made them stick out any, if they wore bulletproof vests, they had to be under the normal clothing and they probably were despite neither Loki nor myself carrying firearms, those were illegal without a permit in this state. What made them stick out to us was that they pretty much living statues in that their eyes didn't wander to certain shops, they didn't interact with anyone or anything, they simple walked where they thought they should be, barely glancing into stores to see if we were there before moving to the next one, not even remotely how even window shopping is done. We knew this was a possibility, that we would be sniffed out somehow, especially after finding out what they thought of Loki, we knew the quiet life we hoped for when we returned to Earth wouldn't last too long when you're the most powerful sorcerer in the realms, a king of one realm, and also the most powerful necromancer on this realm. I guess it didn't matter to them what good we did or how low key we were with our lives, first impressions were all that mattered and sadly for Loki it was one of his worst ones yet. That pissed me off, mortals and their life long grudges that they waste their lives holding onto with little room for less trivial and more important things, good things even. If I had my way, they'd all burn to ash like Thanos' Coven did under my wrath. For now though, I'd settle for fucking up the group that fanned out in the slowly dying but still standing and open mall. 

I pressed send on my burner phone and a moment later, a distraction was born on the intercom or whatever of the mall starting with a very familiar starting chords of a synthesizer.

"N-n-n-e-e-e-c-c-c-r-r-r-o-o-o-mance-mance-mance.

I can, necromance if I want to,

I can bring your friends back to life.

But your friends aren't dead 

And if they're not dead 

Then they're no friends of mine."

Some of the agents immediately headed to the controls of the loud speakers throughout the mall. I dropped my phone hard on the floor, crushed it with a foot then tossed the pieces into several different trashcans before casually going into a store full of people and good hiding spots.

"You can die if you need to

If you don't, you might as well

Cuz you're not my friends

And you know how this ends

I'll send you all to hell!"

Did I revamp a classic oldie but goodie everyone loves and knows? You're damn right I did, not like I got a lot going on until recently. No, that's not me singing it, my voice isn't nearly that deep or masculine and I sure as hell wasn't going to sing to the public if I wasn't getting something out of it like money or scares. Not only did it send agents to the wrong places to look but it got a lot of lingering millennials still wandering the stores into a flash dance which added to the distraction, those cause crowds and loud noises and witnesses recording everything on their phones, good luck avoiding all that while trying to remain off the radar. 

"Take a chance, with a dance, everyone necromance!" was chanted on the radios.

I was very tempted to dance like Peter Griffin's buddies did on Family Guy to the song myself, might be able to slip away better if I'm actively partaking in the fun. Maybe I could dance my way out of there while they're all distracted by the chaos. I moonwalked away from the agents as they sifted through the gathering crowds and paused at yet another old store I loved stopping at in the days of old, ye Spencer's. Did I need another corset though? Already had more than enough toys and I'm not talking the ones you collect and display, the naughty ones like cuffs and collars. Maybe some clothes for our house guest at the least, I'd definitely blend in more than the agents themselves if I didn't leave the mall empty handed. A hoodie, some t shirts, cargo pants because, dude, pockets, so many pockets, some cool socks because c'mon, why not? I happily danced out of the store only to narrowly miss an arrow that imbedded itself in the wall next to me. Someone has no chill here. I looked at the arrow then over at where it came from and gave the archer a very unamused look.

"What century are you living in, Robin Da'hood?" I growled, putting my bag of stuff aside.

The dark haired yeowoman glared at me before taking out another arrow from her modernized quiver and knocking it. "You might not have done the actual crimes, but you're still an accessory to Loki's murders."

"I would think as a woman you'd already know, one can never have too many accessories, go bold or go home."

"Where is your husband anyway?"

"I'd like to change my original question to: in what century are you living in that I would tell you?"

Her response was letting the second arrow fly which again narrowly missed me at the last second but had a trick attached to it as the surface sparked and crackled with electricity. She damn near electrocuted me.

I arched an eyebrow at her. "Yall are convinced that works on everything dead or alive, aren't you? Boy are you in for a shock." I caught the third arrow with a skeletal hand that exploded and burnt the bones showing on half my body for a mere moment before they were back to white again. "That was just rude. Any other surprise arrows? You got an arrow with a rubber Hulk hand attached to the head? That'd be fun. When it hits the target, you'd hear Bruce growling 'hulk smash'."

"What the fuck are you?" she murmured, apparently still stuck on my appearance.

"Hmm?" I shifted back to human mode after tossing aside the arrow I had caught and grinned innocently. "If it's all the same to you, I'll be on my way...unless you wanna waste all your arrows on one target you've missed more times than Stormtroopers aiming at rebels. But what would Clint think if he knew all his training with you went...amiss!" I couldn't hold back the cackles as the jokes kept coming.

She growled at me in frustration, put her bow in her quiver and set it aside like I had with my purchases before getting into a fighting stance. 

"Oooh, it's been a while since I've used fists, safety word is hopscotch!" I beckoned her to come at me, grin not falling even as she lunged with fists swinging.

She was good, fought like a trained boxer or a closer style to either Barton himself or Captain America so classic American style fighting where it was more about power behind the punch than where it hit really. Myself on the other hand, you really couldn't blame me for my own style which was more martial arts when one grew up with Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, and Jet Li. Oh and school bullies because kids are cruel, soulless creeps that pick on anything better or weirder than them. If she survived me, she might be a decent agent down the road, but first she'd have to give up archery because that's like so ten centuries ago. Loser. She got a few good hits on me before I easily figured out her tactics/patterns, and blocked or dodged her fists and feet before several sharp, strong hits to her from the stomach to her side to her head and she was down and out. I pulled her unconscious body into a store and under a rack of clothes along with her quiver, tossed some less flattering clothes onto her for funsies, grabbed my own stuff, and went for the nearest exit.

Of course, the exits were blocked, just outside were the ominous but completely cliche bigass black SUVs with tinted and probably bulletproof windows. On the far side of the cars were people, agents with weapons all pointing at me.

"You have something of ours, we'd like it back and for you to come quietly," one beefy looking but otherwise boring looking dude with a gun told me.

"If I'm coming quietly, you're not doing it right, and your wife is lying to you." He had to be straight, no self respecting man would want to marry that 90's style ponytail wearing villain of a dude.

"Surrender or else," he insisted and flicked the safety off his gun. "No sudden movements either."

"What about gradual ones? Are those still allowed, I'm having a slow day here." I slowly raised my hands as if in surrender but what I was really doing was summoning help. Zombies or really humans as a whole could not sadly pop up from under pavement which is what always surrounds a mall, dying or not. They could however pop up from manholes or else why the hell would they be called that in the first place? The agents didn't quite trust me to do what they wanted and so all unflicked their safeties or whatever, gripping and aiming their guns sturdier like that would help them. Silly humans thinking only what they see in front of them was the threat when they should've been paying attention to the rusty iron circular hole covers quietly being pushed out. Then all at once any SUV parked over them was shoved/toppled over and out they crawled in their gruesome sewer glory. I made sure not one gun was still aimed at me before bolting to where Loki was waiting for me, offering me his arm before poof we were gone again.

"Did you seriously stop to buy more clothes?" Loki asked once we returned to Salem.

"I got them for our new guest," I mumbled. "We want her to be comfortable here, not smelly and stale."

Loki rolled his eyes at my reasoning but didn't argue as he had to know I was right a second time in one day, a new record for me since we were together. "Why did I marry you again?"

"You tell me, handsome, you said I do first if I recall correctly." I stuck my tongue out at him for good measure.


	12. Favorite 4 Letter F Words

She did not unfortunately know any names, they kept her so secure when not training or being tested that she only knew and heard only what they wanted her to and nothing else which explains why she had no idea where the base was located. Upon giving her clean and comfy and dare I say cool clothes even, she paid for them by drawing in startling detail at least one face she saw quite regularly during her stay at undisclosed base with unknown brand name on it. I was really tempted to take the drawing and stick it to our fridge, our illegally obtained kid was a natural artist, so proud. 

"So they killed her parents, at least one of them, steal her away at a super young age and have their sick, twisted way with her for a while, see what makes her tick and then find a way to control that. Train her, activate her powers or whatever, tell her she was made for one purpose, getting resources for more experimenting but because said resources is a fucking god among men, she's gotta do more than training to take him down to her masters and that's where the assassinations come in, make her stronger, make her ruthless, make her a weapon and then release her into the wintery wilds of the Frost Giant king and hope for the best, I guess?" I summed up. "That implies even before experimentation that she would be a valuable asset to them and not just some singled out orphan within their immediate grasp, seeing as they killed her parents before grabbing her and not after to tie up loose ends."

"Valid point," agreed Loki darkly.

"Ha, three times I'm right today, a hat trick! I am...the greatest!" I raised my fists in the air and mimicked Mohammed Ali before settling down at Loki's disapproving look. "We should let her out of the room though like not lock her in there and just let her decide as long as she's inside still and under our watch, where she wants to be."

"Already done," Loki replied smugly.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Laugh it up, blueballs."

"I beg your pardon?!"

"Go on then, beg."

Loki got that sexy "and now you die" look he always got in his eyes before he was about to pounce on me but was stopped by someone clearing their throat. We both paused and turned in the direction of the noise to see Lena standing there in the doorway wearing what I bought her with an amused look on her face. "You sure you can protect me?"

"We're both powerful immortals, one of us is a god, and the other cannot be killed when she's not even alive to begin with," Loki replied.

"We're also both capable of saving or destroying realms, these people, these monsters that tormented you for so long, they're but little microscopic germs about to be destroyed by bleach and antiseptic hand sanitizer of a hypochondriac. So basically yeah, bring it."

"Famous last words," teased Loki.

I snorted in disagreement. "Please, if anything it would be 'seemed like a good idea at the time'. It's like you don't know me at all."

"Are you two always like...this?" asked Lena curiously.

"Like what?" we both asked in unison.

She didn't answer right away. "I'm sorry, I was just taught differently about you both."

"What were you taught?" asked Loki.

"That you hated humans and this planet, that you wanted to see it's end and already destroyed your own homeworld in an attempt to rule it, you were described as a cruel and merciless creature but here you're so...human."

"How dare you? Humans are stupid and he's got at least a little more brains than that," I half joked.

"A little more, you know damn well nothing about me is a little," retorted Loki.

Lena just kinda stared at us in either awe or confusion.

"Dude, we broke her," I mused. "Thought that only happened with Thor which is really a surprise, dude's built like an ox on steroids yet so so fragile, he's not a bull in a china shop, he's a china shop bull."

"Don't think it's her, per say," Loki noted. "Parker had a similar reaction during his stays if you recall."

"Ah Parker. That poor, clueless boy, we definitely broke him of his innocence, that's for damn sure."

"That had to happen eventually, his naivety was starting to really irk me, nearly an adult and he still blushes at anything remotely sexual."

I snickered at the memories of that happening. "Ah to be young and alive again."

"The adventures."

"The power."

"The triumphs."

"The bodies." So many warm, willing lovers while I still had all my nerves in good working order. "If Parker is still a virgin next we see him, I'm sacrificing him, you've no idea how hard it is to find good virgins in peak condition like him."

"For what though? You already have a god giving you everything you want."

Damn he was kinda right once more. What else did I want that Loki couldn't give me but virgin blood absolutely could? "For funsies?"

"Don't think the other gods would like a wasted sacrifice."

I scowled, stumped momentarily. "There anything we can get you?" I asked Lena then. "You're welcome to raid the kitchen for food as long as it's not the last of something or something seasonal as those are harder to find afterward. We've decided you should be allowed to explore the house since you're still our guest here though if there's locked doors, please don't try to break in or you'd lose our trust and we'd have to send you back to your room...Jesus, I sound like a parent now. No boys allowed in the house without both our approval, though other girls are always welcome, always bring protection, I feel like I'm missing something here."

"You're missing something, alright?" teased Loki, earning him a throw pillow to the face. "As long as you're under my house, you'll follow our rules and you really want to stay under our roof as that's where the best protection will be, we can't guarantee it if you're off somewhere else we can't keep track of. We don't want you to think you're still a prisoner, we want you to be comfortable and trusting enough to see this as a home not a prison."

"A home?" Lena murmured.

"I mean at least until we get rid of the people who sent you to us that you need protection from, once that's all done and settled, we'll go from there," I answered for her.

"You'd do that for me? Even though you don't know me?"

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it."

"You're both okay with all this? Do you share the same mind? Is that why there's no arguments, you're always on the same page?"

Loki and I looked at each other for a moment before we both shrugged it off. "Anyone that tries to get in my head ends up with blood coming out of every facial orifice so definitely not that, we're just that close and similar in mindsets that very little needs to be discussed on important things, we're a united front. Right, spanky?"

"Your pet names are worse than Stark's were," Loki grumbled.

"He didn't know you like I do."

"I resided with him about as long as I have with you at this point, give or take a year."

I rolled my eyes at him and shook my head. "Living with and knowing someone don't always go hand and hand, I know Zari but we never actually lived together...slept together definitely but that was as far as she was willing to share space with me long term. You're also not someone known for being open about...anything."

"Hold up, you lived with the Avengers?" asked Lena to Loki.

"Well yes, up till I met Noelle and we decided to move here, I stayed with them at Thor's insistence since my own homeworld had been destroyed and Thor chose to take our people to Midgard of all realms to rebuild."

"And you two are really married?"

I threw up my hands in exasperation. "Why is everyone stuck on that one thing?!"

Loki looked at me ruefully and patted my back mock-soothingly. "It seems like people know you have a hard time settling on just one person to commit to."

I glared at the smug bastard. "I'm not one for favoritism, speaking of, remind me who the golden child was in your previous family?"

Lena was wrong about us, we absolutely argue, just not over important things that take precedent. We bicker and banter and mock and barb and even trash talk about anything trivial and petty for the fun of it.

"You picked me over him, so clearly there is some favoritism there," Loki retorted.

"You were the first one to find me, first non Hydra agent and first handsome, non villain-eqsue looking dude in a lab coat and ridiculous German accent, and did I mention you're handsome? This isn't favoritism, this is have a decent pair of working eyes and asking what a prisoner on death row wants for their last meal, more prison crap or a gourmet meal?" I crossed my arms over my chest and arched an eyebrow challengingly at him.

"And what would you want your last meal to be?" asked Lena curiously.

"Lobster mac and cheese of course, nothing beats that in my menu."

"I've never had that, is it good?"

I just stared at her for a long moment before remembering where she came from before finding us and a bigass grinch-like grin spread across my face as I turned to Loki who just sighed at me knowing exactly what I was after. "Tis, have you tried clam chowdah at least? No? Excellent!"

"Are you trying to fatten her up, Noelle?" asked Loki incredulously.

"I might dabble in dark magic and live in witch city but I don't live in a cottage made of diabeetus," I replied dryly. "Besides, that implies I'm planning on boiling her in a bigass kid sized cauldron for hours so the fat can melt and sweeten the meat and you know how impatient I get when I'm cooking things, there's a reason the freezer is full of frozen premade dinners."

"You don't...actually eat people, do you?" asked Lena cautiously.

"There's nothing remotely appetizing about humans, if I'm biting someone it's either in a moment of passion or my hands are busy and I wanna make the person bleed out," I assured her. "And the one time I'll swallow is if it's from Loki."

"Promises, promises," sassed Loki. "Yes I'll make her your favorite foods, I'll even add some fried calamary I know you love so much."

Maybe I won't sacrifice Peter after all, Loki really does give me everything I want and more.

"If you're really dead, why do you still eat then?" Lena asked me while Loki was making us dinner.

"If you're on birth control, why do you still shag?" I countered smugly.

"What happens to the food though, I mean does it just sit there, or does it go through you like a living body?"

"It's all absorbed and converted to energy, nothing goes to waste so there's no wasting time in the bathroom after. Best part is, I'll never get fat, I can keep on eating to my dead heart's content and nothing about me will change. How do you like them apples?"

"I hate apples, they fed me one every day as a 'treat' along side the sludge that was barely edible," Lena replied.

Loki returned with a bigass casserole dish full of seafood goodness and we all dug in like a weird, freaky family at the dinner table. A dead girl could get used to this.


	13. Ice Chip Off the Old Block

Loki had easily disarmed her the first time we let her loose but then he had literal centuries of practice in combat. Lena had decades of practice herself, while not nearly as old as I certainly felt just looking at her still in her youthfulness, she had acquired quite the skills in training however many years she was under Hydra's control. Finally, a worthy woman opponent I couldn't just kick in the junk and call it a day. She was quick, fluid even, and cunning, exactly like Nat was in her fighting style. She was probably lethal with a blade as well but for now, we stuck with just fists and feet which I was all for, swordsplay was Loki's and my thing as we still had yet to determine who was the better swashbuckler. Lena didn't stop and change tactics if she was blocked or dodged with her attacks, she went with the flow of it in order to try and throw me off, the thing with me is that since my time in Jotunheim I had somehow adapted to be even stronger in order to not get stepped on or crushed being all of a mighty 5'4''. So now, aside from maybe Bucky or Captain Rogers before he looked his age, no mortal can even leave a bruise or break my bones or make me bleed. Another thing about me is that should my body parts break or strain or be twisted or dislocated, they almost immediate start to fix themselves in a rather sickening fashion if you have a weak stomach, you can actually hear it happening as much as I can feel it happening. Not like in the movies where it just suddenly happens in the blink of an eye seamlessly and smoothly, I was a walking horror movie monster after all and what horror movie isn't complete without gruesome special effects and gore. 

That was why Lena had a slightly disgruntled look on her face after successfully dislocating my arm from my shoulder only to hear it actively pop back in a moment later. 

"If you want to stick around, you should probably get used to a lot of weird noises and not just from the bedroom either," I warned her.

"Does Loki mind that?"

"He's over a thousand years old, hun, he's seen and heard more horrors than I've created or been part of myself, don't you worry about that tasty blue raspberry popsicle," I told her.

She scowled at the answer for some reason before returning to combat training with me, this time with a very powerful kick to my abdomen I easily caught only for her to twist her body up, using me to push herself up and kick my head with her free foot, a sickening crack heard from the impact as I stumbled back seeing spots for a second before my jaw corrected itself audibly.

"If Loki was watching, he'd think you were actively trying to kill me considering the damage," I mused. "And after I fed you gourmet New England dinners."

She had the grace to look embarrassed, even apologetic. "This is what I was trained to do, not hold back, not show mercy or weakness, just attack."

I relaxed my stance and studied her curiously. "You're telling me they didn't shadow train you? That implies that everyone you trained against always got your full power, is that right?"

She nodded stiffly, a look of discomfort etched on her face as if she was still reliving that.

"What about simply to disarm rather than maximum damage? I mean you were sent here to take down, but not to kill, right? Can you show me how you'd go about doing that?"

"You want me to demonstrate how I'd take down your husband?" she asked incredulously. "But you're not anything like him in that matter."

"Try?" I pushed hopefully.

"Tell me something first, how long have you know Loki?"

"Several years give or take, we were stuck on another planet for a while that had like no sun or clocks for that matter so it was very hard to tell how long we were stranded before returning here."

"And you know each other so well...I was informed he was closed off to everyone, even those closest."

"I'm curious who told you these things and how they came to that. You're not entirely wrong though, he loves his privacy which after meeting Thor, I can totally understand, that dude doesn't understand that concept at all. The trick is, if you want the master of tricks and secrets to open up, you gotta meet him half way at least or in some way prove to him you're trustworthy, you can't gain anything from him the easy way which includes interrogation, manipulation, really anything that gains you information without first earning his trust. There's a reason he's closed off, he's not trying to be an emo, he's been betrayed, lied to his entire life really so you gotta really haul ass to earn his trust, then he might consider opening up."

"And you did that?"

"For me it wasn't hard, his dead mother told me to trust him completely when he first offered me his hand, and I trust the dead exclusively as they cannot lie, thusly I took his hand and that was really all it took for him to know I trusted him when people he had been stuck living with for years prior to meeting me wouldn't even give him the time of day."

"Why did he offer you his hand?"

"We'd just finished kicking Hydra ass and then this wizard shows up saying I'm worst than the apparently now former president, thank god that deal is over with, and while Stark distracted him by claiming dibs on me and Loki, Loki took that moment to slip away and offered me his hand to get me out as well and I took it because what did I have to lose when his own mom said go for it? We doing this or not?"

She smirked then she lunged. A fancy flurry of females' fists and feet. 

Women are a hell of a lot more powerful than the other genders will ever really know, they were made to kick ass really, but maybe men of their world feared them for it and did everything they could think of to convince said women they had no power at all and should just submit. When I was bullied for being myself to the point of physical abuse, it became apparent that not only was I essentially feared for being me, but also I would need to show them just how much they really should. Not by raising the dead of course, wasn't nearly as strong or experienced in that kind of power that young, but there's more than one way to skin a dickwad. One way was to learn how to make them bend and beg without using one's "womanly wiles". Thus the reason I was a damn good martial artist for a silly freak of a Caucasian girl. I was no Michelle Yeoh or Jet Li but compared to the people I was literally kicking the ass of, I might as well be. One of the few things I was allowed to keep while most of my past was wiped clean of my memory, they wanted me to remember I was a strong independent necromancer that didn't need no living person holding me down. 

Lena preferred her fists mostly when doing hand to hand combat and if she was your normal, unexperimented nonmutant human that wouldn't get her very far with me or anyone that was exceptionally strong or most healthy dudes sadly. But she did have the super strength, agility, and who knows how many years of muscle building in training going for her so I couldn't really critique her on that since it worked in her favor. I myself preferred using my legs, that was what I had been taught as a kid before I knew I'd be an indestructible immortal, a woman's strength is mostly in her legs and core so that's what I focused on with fighting, kicking literal ass and taking names. I used my arms and hands to block more or mix things up and keep her on her toes instead of constantly expecting kicks. Either my legs or I'd use my whole body's weight to throw hers around, locking limbs, twisting them, pinning her down. At one point, she threw a punch I grabbed hold of hard, wrapped my entire body around and dropped down, forcing her down with me as I still had a death grip on her arm and we were both on the floor of the basement we were fighting in. She struggled and kicked and tried to pry me off her but I had her locked where I wanted her and that's when her trapped arm grabbed hold of one of mine and I realized she was cold to the touch for more than just fighting in a poorly insolated space. My eyes widened and I let go of her instantly and rolled out of her reach to look at the arm she grabbed of mine to confirm my thoughts.

"Well fuck me," I muttered. I then got to my feet and offered her a hand up myself which she cautiously took before I pulled her up but didn't let go of her hand and held it up curiously. "Come with me, not that you really have a choice, thought I should ask first." I pulled up to the first floor where Loki was currently reading a book sprawled out on the living room couch, Lady Catalie at his feet. "We need to talk."

"I thought we had an understanding on never using that sentence to each other unless something unspeakable has happened between us," Loki replied though he put the book down, marking the page and giving me his attention.

"If it was unspeakable then saying we need to speak on it kind of sounds counterproductive," I told him with a confused frown. "What? I told you I always listen, don't give me that look when I'm actually doing what you want, that's counterproductive too, negative reinforcement."

"Noelle," Loki said with a sigh of him being done with my wordplay.

"This will sound like a trap but I promise it isn't, did you have relations with Midgardians before me at any time in like the last few centuries or less?" I asked him seriously. "Sorry, you can sit down, Lena, this concerns you too." I let go of her arm then and let her choose her seat.

"What are you getting at here?" Loki asked me cautiously.

"Before you met me, I mean, I'm not trying to frame you for being unfaithful, you'd be dead if you were, I'm talking about much earlier than that."

"I had a brief one with an enhanced woman, why? That was so long ago, she's probably-"

"Dead," I finished for him. "But not due to old age I'm betting."

Loki looked at me then at Lena then back at me, a frown marring his perfectly sculpted face. "You're not implying..."

"She gave me frostbite just now, and you said there's one, only one that has your blood in them, correct?" I asked to Lena. "She's been here decades, meaning before you got your ass slammed by the Hulk, so they couldn't have just taken some of your blood from then and injected it into her. One parent dead...the other missing, and she has most if not all of the same traits you do."

"You're saying he's my..." Lena began quietly.

"How did you figure that out before I could?" asked Loki.

"Well she can't give another Frost Giant frost bite, the times she fought you, also it's been established that I've become the brains of this operation while you're the beauty, enjoy."

Loki scowled at me before turning his attention to Lena once more and watching her process my discovery as well. "It all makes sense now, I couldn't understand why they'd send her here, someone who was still in her youth despite how long she's been one would be able to take me down. It's because of that American phrase, fighting fire with fire, to take one down you need to send one in."

I nodded. "Although I personally wouldn't recommend literally doing that, California tries that every time there's a forest fire and it just spreads faster as a result. But hey, you got your wish to have a kid, granted she's not mine by blood as well but I'm sure there's still the right of conquest and I did totally kick her ass down there, frostbite or not."

"I have...a daughter," Loki breathed out.

"They sought her out because she had a lot of you in her and you're one of a kind but you were back on Asgard since before she was born probably so her mother, whoever and whatever she was, was alone and taken out of the equation to get to Lena. They steal her, warp, twist, torture, and train her into what they want but then they get greedy once Lena is done, they want more of her but her blood is diluted by her mother and they can't have anything less than more perfection so they wait and they watch till the original source returns."

"Why now though?" asked Loki more to himself.

"You were more or less protected by the Avengers as long as you were here and then when we broke off from the A team, we forged our own protection and stayed off anyone's radar before being sent to Narnia and now we're here and came back on everyone's radar when we returned with our own armies kicking the ass of the biggest threat this universe has seen. Can't stay hidden now unfortunately. Sorry about your mom, hun. But hey, Loki's apparently been one of those two, you got two for the price of one, tough act to follow there."

"Noelle," Loki said in warning, probably still done with my less than serious demeanor.

"My question is, how'd you manage to find a virgin for this wish to the higher gods?"


	14. Just Call Me Daddy

To say Loki was angry would be like saying Tony Stark is good techie or Tom Hiddleston is nice to look at, the biggest understatement known to anyone with a working pair of eyes. It would be more accurate at this point to say he was furious beyond words considering how bloody quiet he had gone upon learning all this at once just from what I put together. It made perfect sense though and that probably pissed him off even more because he completely dropped the ball on putting those pieces together, the longer lifespan, the agility, the hair and eyes even, I mean yeah no blue skin or markings but that had to be from her mom's side or he would've figured it out instantly. 

"This is all because I gave you frost bite? How is that like Loki?" asked Lena while Loki was fuming.

I threw a pillow at Loki to get his super heated attention. "Show her, you idjit, it's just us girls here."

He glared at me for being a might insensitive to his reactions but sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and allowing the glamor to drop. His eyes just as blood red and his skin blue and bumpy. "I am a Frost Giant, which makes you half of one naturally, our touch is lethal to mortals, especially when threatened."

"This whole time I was betting on you being a vampire too," I muttered. "The good news is you won't burn in the sunlight at least...or sparkle even."

"If you're a Frost Giant, then why don't you give her frost bite?" Lena asked Loki.

"My Jotun abilities didn't quite surface till I actually discovered I was one on their own realm, the one I rule currently. Most of my life I was told I was something else, something better than them and I believed it so strongly even after finding out the truth that those other powers never really came until much recently when I was stranded on that realm again to prove I was in fact one of them. At which point, I had full control over everything I possess including Jotun powers should my Asgardian form waver, my wife also never stays injured or marred for more than a moment and as she loves to point out in jest, the cold doesn't bother her anyway."

"Does that mean if I'm actually your daughter, that I'd be next in line to rule that realm?"

I narrowed my eyes at the hopeful tone of that girl. "She's definitely your daughter, the second the truth is laid out she's got her sights on a high seat of power to a realm she's never even been on."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you? I'm willing to bet if she wants to stay with us long term, you'll use the fact she's not of your blood to toss responsibility of her onto me," Loki retorted dryly.

"Is that not what parents usually do? I wouldn't know, I never knew mine," I stated smugly.

Loki rolled his eyes at my antics. "The throne will go to the next Jotun that has shown they are worthy of such a responsibility, regardless of bloodline. Should I step down in the near future or perish, it has already been decided that the Steward of the throne shall take it in my place for good."

Lena deflated at this, making me snicker at her reaction and hopes being popped, maybe this whole raising the living thing would be fun.

"What kinda powers did this enhanced lover of yours have?" I asked Loki curiously. "Do you remember?"

"Nothing too showy if I recall, she was what you would call a human lie detector by the name of Verity Willis, which now explains how Lena was able to easily find our home in the first place despite my best efforts to keep this whole property concealed." His face contorted in rage again. "We were quite close for the brief time we spent together, and they killed her!"

"She has to have been avenged, if not by us then by the Avengers or why the hell do they even call themselves that really? What we didn't tear down, Bucky told us he and Captain Rogers did," I assured him.

Loki looked like he believed me but wasn't quite satisfied with that. "Can you...? I know I've not asked this of you since my mother but..."

I smiled sadly knowing what he was asking and my eyes went milky white. "She's not with either of you so I'm fairly certain she's moved to where she should be." I lifted a hand and in the tongue of the dead asked if there was one such Verity Willis that would like to convey anything to the living they knew. "Her killer's dead, that I can say with absolute certainty, she watched you, Lena, watched and hung onto you till you found us, or rather found Loki first then moved on knowing you'd be in good hands for once. Gotta admit, I was not expecting to meet another of your exes this way, this day is just full of surprises. She didn't go down without a fight, you should know, Loki, her killer died with her, atta girl! Apparently you taught her how to throw knives as she threw one at his head while she was being shot at...that's all I got from her, she's returning to the other side now." I blinked and my eyes and vision was back to the side of the living.

"Did you really just..." Lena asked me incredulously.

"Did you really think necromancers are just zombie generals?" I replied back. "More than just the walking dead out there, and as long as they're dead they're fair game." Except vampires of course, thank gods she's not one of them. "So let's sum up this shitstorm of surprises shall we? We know the why and the how and possibly the when, we still gotta figure out the who and the where of it all though, any ideas, Daddio?"

"No no, you are absolutely never ever calling me that again," Loki growled at me with narrowed red eyes. "That is one kink I will not abide by."

"Oh agreed there, but you won't be hearing that from me either way," I teased. "Now that we're all one big dysfunctional family here."

"You couldn't have asked Verity about them since she's been watching Lena?" Loki asked quietly.

I rolled my eyes at his hopefulness. "They don't focus on details after death, just their anchor to the living world which is Lena herself in this case. You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?"

Loki sneered at me teasing him. "Well figuring out she was my daughter seemed easy enough." He narrowly dodged a pillow aimed at his face a second time and growled at me. "So no one has the answers we seek then, not except the people themselves that sent her..."

My eyes widened as I caught onto what he was saying. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, the next thing I throw at you won't be made of cloth and feathers and won't be as easy to dodge either."

"Then what would you suggest?" Loki snapped back. "We're no closer to finding the whole truth than we were before figuring out what we know now."

"You'll be playing right into their hands, exactly what they want regardless of your own plans, they'll be prepared, they have to be, this has been planned for decades from the sounds it and our plans wouldn't even reach a month. You do this and not only will they have their hands on you, but on her as well, you can't guarantee either of your safety going to the source even as bait." I combed a hand through my hair in distress then and began pacing the living room, a similar look on Loki's as well.

Loki scowled in deep thought and rested his chin over tightly folded hands before looking over at his newfound daughter once more. "Once you got a hold of me, what would you do next? How would I be delivered?"

"I'd send them a signal saying I have you under control, they would then give me a location to take you to them and they'd take it from there," Lena replied quietly.

"What signal?"

"I'd find the nearest radio or TV station, slip in and then make my presence known, they're monitoring all of it, all the time."

"Loki," I murmured, no longer able to follow his train of thought. "What are you plotting?"

"Something we've tried before if you recall and since Hydra's not the one we're after, they won't know what to expect."

I frowned trying to figure out what he was hinting before it dawned on me and chewed my lip in thought. "If you get caught, if this doesn't work..."

Loki stared hard at me in challenge. "Go on, finish your threat."

"At least one of us, most likely myself, will be made into a villain, you know this. If you get caught by these people that are so clearly after you as it is, them and everyone associated with them will burn and we won't be able to have the peace we've been holding onto as long as we have."

"Worst comes to worst, we flee back to Jotunheim, and this time you can take the cat with you."

"You know how I feel about running, these boots were only made for walking."

Loki stood up from his spot on the couch and closed the distance between us in a heartbeat, cupping my face in both of his hands and looking me deep in the eyes. "Whatever happens, we will come out of it together, I swear it. If not Jotunheim, Vanaheim then, we both know how the king there feels about you."

I rolled my eyes at him. "We had a moment and then you had to ruin it, didnt you? Green is so very painfully clearly your color."

"Only for you, my love."

I sighed and pressed a hand against one of his still on my face. "I'm not going to convince you not to, am I?"

"You know me so well."

I deflated in his hold and all but let myself crumble against him, allowing him to pull me into his hold completely and reassuringly. "Fiiiiine. But this proves you can't teach an old god new tricks."

Before anything was set in motion, Loki needed to be damn sure we could trust his daughter, as we would be leaving her at our home and didn't want to keep her locked in one room any longer. He also need to ensure that she could and would help us take down whoever sent her to us. He was betting that they'd send something to Lena after she sent them a signal her mission was completed that only she could understand so Loki being a god of many talents went into her mind, gathered everything he could from her memories and personally stored info while also sifting through thoughts to see if she was as trustworthy as she hoped. Worst came to worst though, I had a backup plan for if she wasn't. A few phonecalls to a bunch of close friends would instill that even if our plan fell apart around us, we'd still be ok more or less. Hopefully we wouldn't be on the run either by the end of this. Hopefully.


	15. Custody Battle Royale

"Super strength and eons of practice aside, how the fuck do you breathe in that many layers of leather and metal, how do you move so fluidly in something that heavy and constricting?" I asked Loki as we stared up at the Boston radio building.

"You should've asked the Widow that, I'm positive her battle attire is much more constricting than mine is," retorted Loki dryly.

"Disrespectful to waste the dead's time with trivial questions," I told him firmly.

Loki gave me his patented unamused glance before looking back at the building in front of us. "Why are you asking about how to breathe when you don't even do that yourself?"

"Because I want to know how someone that does can kick ass so elegantly in something without air flow."

"It's an Asgardian thing," was his short response.

"That's cute because you're not an Asgardian."

Loki just rolled his eyes at me before we headed inside. Much like Shield, slipping past security was easy enough before we found one room that was currently playing a commercial and empty, most likely the hosts of that radio show were on a quick break of some kind, what luck. I stood by the door as a lookout while Loki slipped inside and played a recording he had made of Lena saying the codewords that told whoever was listening that the job was done. As soon as that was finished, he dimensionally pocketed the recording and slipped back out of the room and we hid out of sight as the hosts of the show returned to their station room and resumed. That was when a phonecall came through for them, a phonecall with someone dropping their own hints of phase 2 carefully coded casually in conversation. Luckily, Loki was a master of wordplay so he easily deciphered where we were to meet these people next.

"You humans have no imagination," Loki muttered after he poofed us some walking distance to the destination we were given. "Could've figured that out in my early 200s."

"Well yeah, you got the whole Allspeak thing where you understand every fucking word spoken and guess what, that was spoken code, big whoop."

"If we weren't about to wreak havoc right now, I'd take you right here right now for your attitude alone."

I snickered at his attempt to threaten me. "That's all it takes? Why didn't I try that earlier?"

Loki smirked but held his tongue sadly.

"Promise me something before shit gets real here, if this backfires on us and it looks like we can't just Hulk smash our way out, you gotta run, don't be like Thor and just keep fighting even when you know you can't win."

Loki turned to me then, a worried expression on his usually calm stoic face. "Noelle-"

"Promise me, no lies, no tricks, you see an opening, a chance to flee, you take it, no looking back, promise you do that."

"Not without you."

I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance. "You have a daughter to tend to now and you're not nearly as indestructible as me, only one of us can survive anything thrown at us." I knew he wouldn't do it, as much as he claimed to be the opposite of Thor, the two of them had one thing in common besides a shitty father and that was their stubbornness, most likely from their shitty father. I had a plan for that though, knowing he wouldn't just go along with what I had hoped for.

"Why such worry and doubt? You weren't like this last time we did this trick?"

"I just met you then." The feeling in my gut continued to eat at me as we got closer to our destination. This all seemed a bit too easy for my liking and if there was one thing I learned being dead as long as I have, it was that when something looked too easy, I was definitely missing something important that would complicate things.

"Whatever happens, we're in this together," Loki assured me.

I refrained from disagreeing on that one thing. They didn't want both of us, whoever these people were, they had one target, everything else was an obstacle to be taken down and walked over. I couldn't say why I was worried, I was almost completely sure these were just a bunch of greedy humans and I've dealt with just humans most of my afterlife and absolutely all of my before-life. At least that I can remember. We've dealt with just humans before, with Hydra when we just met, but even then there was those times they nearly had the jump on us when they used Loki to make me submit and I hated that, hated seeing him being brought to his knees. He's a motherfucking king, if anyone should be on their knees, its those lowly mortals, those godless little humans that thought they had all the answers and were above gods themselves. How fucking dare they? "Right then, take it away, Daddio!"

"You're enjoying this entirely too much." Loki held out his arms and let me fall into them before we reached the place to meet and pretend dragged me the rest of the way there before placing my limp form at his feet and binding me with easily breakable but still convincing looking restraints. 

We didn't have long to wait though. "What took you so long, Changeling?" A masculine voice demanded, I couldn't see what was going on as I had my eyes closed to mimic unconsciousness.

"I got caught, spent my time gaining their trust before I got them back in order to complete the mission," Loki responded.

I heard movement coming toward me and swear I could feel Loki standing by me tense up before what could only be someone's boot from the feel and smell of it, pushed me onto my back and something long and arrow poke at me, most likely a gun barrel. "We got him, boss! He's down for the count!" What had to be two fingers were pressed against my neck and I definitely could sense Loki trying to remain still while watching all this. While select few people could perfectly mimic death by slowing down their heartbeat and breathing to near death like, I taught myself how to mimic living by doing the reverse. "Alive but weak." Well that's just rude. Footsteps were heard a bit farther away than the previous ones which had to be right next to me then. 

"Good work, Changeling," a somewhat familiar voice replied.

That was all I needed to call forth the dead from where I lay on the ground, there was no doubt there were much more than just two dudes meeting us, no one was that stupid to not have backup ready which is exactly what I planned for myself. They were restless beneath the surface, waiting to spring up and funny enough, so was I. My eyes flew open then, bonds snapping off with the smallest effort on my part that got the first dude's attention and one well placed open palm strike to the chest and the first dude flew off his feet and landed hard on his back with a wheezing gasp and couldn't get back up as he struggled to breathe. Not quite the five point palm exploding heart technique but with me I really only needed one point. I slowly got to my feet and looked around to see my bet was correct, they were somewhat hidden still but I could at the very least sense the lives with weapons pointed at me, making me smirk as they hadn't figured out the whole scheme of ours yet. 

"Either Hydra's still snug within your division or you're no longer the organization you claim to be," I noted smoothly. "What would the good Captain say about this?"

"Nothing, he's been in retirement since Stark's death so he's no longer part of this," the boss Fury stated. "Not that he's ever agreed with our methods."

"Your methods, you mean. He was perfectly fine fighting along side me defending this speck of a realm from certain extinction, and where were you in all that?" I countered. "Oh yes, prepping a child to take down someone that came to your aid."

"I don't have to explain myself to you, take him out again, Changeling," barked Fury.

Loki, without missing a beat, summoned an ice dagger threw it toward me but rather than actually hitting me, it blew past my locks and buried itself in someone else that had a sniper rifle trained on me. Of course before anyone could put two and two together, I used that moment of confusion before they did the math to raise my dead and hands shot out of the ground and grabbed at any pair of army/combat boots they could reach, keeping their attention off Loki specifically aside from Ross who for some reason wore shiny leather loafers, the lush. 

"The necromancer's here! There's zombies!" one trigger happy idiot cried, shooting at the ground around him frantically.

"You'll be out of bullets before you even make a dent in one of them," I informed him dryly.

"What are you waiting for, Changeling? I gave you an order!" roared Fury before taking out an also familiar looking firearm and taking aim right at me. "I'll just do it myself then."

Loki ran to me just as he fired in a show of attack to at least throw off suspicion from himself for that moment but probably also to protect me but I knew what was coming just from looking at the gun as white hot electrical shocks rattled my body though I stood my ground as while tingly, didn't really do any lingering or terribly painful damage. I shuddered, shook off the voltage and glared at Fury while Loki stood beside me and we both summoned at least one dagger at hand.

"Her name," growled Loki as our disguises dissolved and the dust settled. "Is Lena. How dare you send my own blood against me."

Fury paused then, seeing us both poised and prepared to attack at any sudden movements and narrowed his eye at us. "You lost your claim to her when you left her mother decades ago."

"Well you lost your claim to her when you sent a daughter to her father's home," snarled Loki, absolutely livid with rage.

"Whatever it takes to stop a monster like you," Fury retorted and with a nod of his head, all hell broke loose.

How he managed to amass an army like he apparently had hidden up his sleeve, I have no idea but damn there were a lot of them. And of course they had more than your average guns with them, how delightful. "Where were all they when Thanos was laying waste to the real protectors of this planet?"

"He probably snapped them out and they're only now ready to fight when it was reversed," muttered Loki before he initiated mitosis and sent his clones to help us out.

"Lazy bastards," I growled, giving victims of a handful of them enough power to at the very least distract them and obscure their views. Vengeful spirits are a powerful thing to behold and call forth. So now there were both zombies and ghosts holding off the militia of Shield agents.

Somehow in the chaos however Loki and I got separated, both going after different targets that were being more than a bother to us, you know, those headstrong, must prove I'm a man by never giving up kinda soldiers. That seemed to be exactly what Fury wanted though as once Loki was far enough away from me, I heard him shout "Now, boys! Aim for his limbs!" I turned and my usually still, cold blood boiled as ropes were essentially shot out and wrapped around one of his arms as he blasted someone with his seidr and before he could untangle himself his other arm was caught and pulled taut, and then they went for his legs. Jesus Christ they were damn near drawing and quartering him minus the four horses at the end of each rope. Out of patience and time, I gathered death magic into my hands and chucked it at the closest agents near to me, sending them flying off and smacking into trees or buildings dead. I didn't waste of second of that opening and ran like a dragon out of Muspelheim right for the circle of agents about to go to down on my husband. There was only one way to get him out of that kind of bind in my opinion, having watched the first Transformers movie where Shia Labouf attempted this for Bumblebee and was promptly tackled and arrested. I charged at the men, side flipped over the ones stretching out Loki's left side and let myself drop down hard onto the ropes containing, my sudden weight forcing the ropes out of the men's grasp completely while I stood in front of Loki, black electrical death magic building in both fists as Loki finally got himself free.

"Call them off or what happens next, what happens to you and them and anyone against us, that will all be on you, I'll make sure of it," I snarled. "No one will blame us this time, you want to know why? You can't pin crimes on someone no one can or will identity."

"Noelle," Loki murmured in warning, knowing exactly what I was about to do. 

I glanced over at Loki and smiled at him sadly. "You have a daughter to look after now."

"You didn't-" He didn't get to finish that statement, already knowing the answer as magic that was neither his nor mine started to encompass him.

"I'm not losing you again, they have Hydra's files, they know how to use you."

"You can't!" he cried, desperately, already starting to disappear.

"I can't, my coven can though. I love you." He was gone after that.

"What did you do?" demanded Fury, seeing his initial target vanish.

"Sent him off, somewhere you won't find him." I snuffed out the magic building in my fists and crossed my arms over my chest. "Check and mate, king me."

"Take her instead, he'll come for her, she's his wife after all," Fury instructed.

"You sure you're not Hydra? I'm having some massive deja vous vibes here."


	16. Glass Case Of Emotions

"You had it coming, 

You had it coming,

You only have yourself to blame,

If you'd have listened,

If you'd have left us

None of you would be maimed!" I sang within the prison they put me in while attempting to do the cell block tango with the added restraints on me.

Fury stood outside my cell with the most stoic look yet, watching me while glancing at the control panel, not unlike the one I was kept in at Hydra, seeing where I'm going here?

"How did you send him away?" Fury demanded.

"Magic, obviously, where have you been?" I replied boredly.

"You must think yourself so clever to keep him from us but while we have no documented records of you, you've also been high on our most dangerous threats lists."

"Am I above or below a swarm of angry Africanized bees?" I asked curiously.

Fury's already displeased look just continued to darken with each snarky comment. "You've attacked far too many of my agents."

"I haven't even touched them, you'll find. A horde of hungry dead people have and in some cases the restless victims of the ones your agents have killed, what attacked and possibly killed your minions was you if you were the one giving them orders to kill, I did warn you what happened would be on your head." I sat down on the cold metal bench behind me and then promptly sprawled out on it so I was staring at the ceiling of the cell. "It also helps in not being framed for murder that I don't have any fingerprints either or dental records or even whatever it is yall scan in the eyeballs."

"I have agents still claiming they're being haunted by you when there's nothing there, what did you do them?"

"Sounds like you don't believe in ghosts, Nicholas Nickleby. That's too bad but that's why they have me to give them the strength to believe in themselves free of charge." I turned my head to glance over at him from where I lay and winked. "Barton didn't tell you who I saw haunting him when I was last here? Nat sends her regards."

Fury slammed a fist against the enforced glass pulsing with something I couldn't figure out what but was betting was stolen otherworldly technology fused with this world's. "You think this is a game here?!"

I smirked, enjoying his easily riled up reaction. "I think you have a death wish, Hydra tried to crack me open and play with me for years and you won't keep me here more than a week so you're just wasting time and resources in whatever it is you think you got going here. Did you really think he wouldn't find out your little pet was his offspring?"

"There was a small possibility but we figured him finding out would soften him up for her in the end."

"Well you're half right there, we initially were going to keep her till she knew she was on the wrong side and wouldn't win against us but now that flerken's out of the bag, we're keeping her as part of the family. I thought you guys were an intelligence kinda agency but I'm not seeing any of that so far. Don't believe in ghosts despite all other paranormal beliefs being proven true, tried to trick and deceive the god of tricks and lies, wonder how many bubbles of belief I'll get to pop while I'm here."

The hawkling was watching old footage of Hydra attempting to break me from outside the cell, the little chick seemed hopeful she'd have a weakness to exploit from it, occasionally glancing at me to see if I had any reaction to what she was looking. I didn't so much as glance at her but I could hear myself making the same kind of snarky comments to people with ridiculous accents on an ipad. After so many hours of footage, she either gave up or just got bored as she turned it off and turned her attention to me.

"You know this is what we did with your husband," she told me. "When he first came to earth. You two act almost exactly the same, putting up a show before willingly submitting and then mocking the captor behind the glass."

"Well you make it really easy on all those accounts," I told her slyly. "He wanted to be caught then, I wanted to now, and we both tend to get what we want in the end."

"Why didn't you kill me back at the mall?"

"Did you want me to? I'm a necromancer not a mind reader, that's Loki's thing."

"You could've easily done that but you didn't, why?"

I rolled my eyes at her persistence. "I only kill actual threats and honey, you're 99 things but a threat ain't one. Hydra was a threat, Thanos was a threat, ex lovers were a threat, you're a neophyte looking for brownie points till her next badge is earned. I'll take a case of Caramel Delights while you're here though. And Thin Mints too if you have a freezer nearby."

"Why did the Avengers ever take you in?" she sneered.

"Because they had souls, good ones, ones I'd feel bad about ripping out of them, clearly a lot has changed since the best of them perished. You're all as corrupt and rotten as the company that created and infested yours now, the one that caged me for five years."

"You can't do that."

"You sure about that? I'm sure there's footage of it somewhere, I mean isn't that what this little group is all about, surveillance and vigilance and all that questionable stuff? It's what got me on Hydra's radar, taking someone's soul out of their body in the middle of a fight." I smirked remembering that fight, probably wasn't my best move using that much raw power to level a building with me still in it but it got the job done and that's all that matters really. "There is a lot you don't know about me and what I'm capable of, remember that when I burn this place to the ground, you know nothing, Kate Bishop."

"We'll keep you here till we at least know the stuff that matters. Like how to stop you for good."

"You'll die of old age before you figure that out then or I'll get bored of being here and just break out myself."

"Does Loki know what it is, we can just keep you here till he comes for you then squeeze it out of him."

"My husband has been betrayed far too many times to allow you to do that time, he'll die as well before giving you that power over me and then you'll not only not have any more answers than you did before, but you'll be out of a source for that new super soldier formula you got brewing."

"You'd let him die to keep your secret?"

"I'm a necromancer, hun, no one stays dead if I have any say in it."

"That's not all you are though, is it?" she challenged.

I smirked. "Do you or have you ever played DnD? That's where I learned there's an actual name for me, I've yet to find any stories that use it...well besides this one obviously."

"I don't have time for role playing games," she sneered.

"Then you're just as vanilla as you look and I feel sorry for your lovers, they're all missing out on that." She glared at my less than subtle wordplay but remained silent. "The term if I remember correctly is a lich, dead, impossible to kill, controls the other dead, all that jazz you already know about me. Except I don't look nearly as dead as those talented DnD artists make them, would kill to have that kind of artistic talent, the detail and coloring on those illustrations, I'm lucky if I can draw a decent stick figure." I wonder how much those artists get paid for those renditions of creatures. I actually looked just like those drawings of my kind when in my last and final form, the form I took when helping in defeating Thanos for good but I already knew no one would remember that that was still alive to witness it, much like Dr. Strange, it was wiped from their memory so people would never connect the dots that I'm the Horsemen of Death. Those around to see me at the end of everything won't see my form and think, oh hey that's Nell over there, let's see if we can talk her down from this, they'll see my form and realize they're as boned as I look. 

"You expect me to believe all that?" she countered.

"I expect you to report everything I say and do to your superiors like a good little bitch because that's why you're here, isn't it? To see if someone that looks close to the age they think I am can get more out of me than Pirate Shaft over there. I mean, come on, people, you did this exact kinda thing with my husband, same prison, same people almost, you know what they say about history, right? Those that fail it are doomed to repeat it and you're flunking with a bigass red F."

"You took me down without batting an eye yet you surrendered when you easily could've taken down the other agents, why?" she demanded with gritted teeth.

I grinned, knowing I hit a nerve with my constant taunting. "Better me than my other half, you've already pegged him as a threat when he's already done his time and served his sentence and then some, he doesn't deserve whatever you had planned for him."

"What do you know about what he deserves?"

I sat up slowly and slinked over to her, pressing myself against the pulsing glass between us and stared her right in the eyes, my own darkening as they board into hers. "Look into my eyes and tell me you know him better than I do, look at me like a woman and tell me unbiasedly you know him, without the opinions fed to you from Barton and Fury and the other agents. Tell me right here right now you know everything about him, every reason, every motive, every backstory that led to the actions you claim to know about from him. Take out the earpiece, look into my eyes and tell me unflinchingly." My own eyes didn't go white this time, they went hollow but only she could see that, hollow like the lich I was underneath the ashen skin.

She went utterly silent and took a step back, fear definitely flickering in her otherwise confident yet furious demeanor. "You're a monster."

Why did this sound familiar? This whole place was one big deja vous to me but I was certain I hadn't been here before. "Moreso than Loki and yet he still said, I do. Imagine that. Nighty night!"

She huffed in frustration and stormed out of the holding unit I was stuck in, I wondered what she was expecting from that last statement. Everything I told her was pretty much public knowledge among those that met me in battle or otherwise. Not to mention I was married to the god of secrets and tricks, did she really think I'd slip and fall for hers? I was raised back from the dead at night but it wasn't last night. 

I looked at the hidden camera in one corner of the cell. "I don't know what you were expecting."


	17. Witch Better Save My Honey

Loki was beyond livid when his surroundings changed from a field of mortal men to a small temple meeting room he recognized instantly as Zari's and Nell's coven. Around him was her closest wiccan practitioners who somehow and by somehow it was definitely from Nell figured out how to summon and then bind him so he couldn't just poof back to where he had been summoned from. There were very few instances where Loki believed being a god was a curse and this was definitely one of them.

"Nell did this, didn't she?" he growled at Zari once she finished the summoning.

"Excuse you? We did this, don't give credit where it ain't due, would think you know that better than most," snapped Zari, hands on her hips.

As much as Loki was angry at what the coven had done to him, he also couldn't help but be impressed it worked so well for them and had the utmost respect for both the coven and Nell's best friend who always had her back no matter what went down. "Send me back."

"Um no," was Zari's instant sarcastic reply.

"My wife is in the hands of Shield, I must get her back!"

"It's Shield?" Zari asked surprised. "I had money it was the government that did that whole Accords that pretty much fucked up the universe by splitting the Avengers, was actually hoping it was more than just betting, they need to go down for nearly destroying the universe." Murmurs of agreement went around the room among the coven.

"The man that caged me when I first came to this realm now cages her, he needs to go down first."

"You aren't going anywhere until we say so and we say no," another member stated firmly. "She entrusted us to keep you from that, she knows what she's doing here."

"Does she?" he growled at them, hoping to instill doubt so they'd let him loose from his godly binds.

"You dare question your own wife?" Zari retorted smugly. "I'm so telling her that when she's out again, you'll be in the cathouse for sure after that. She knew exactly what to do, she explained everything in detail she was betting would happen which did. She knew you would start killing men if things got too hairy and she didn't want you to be seen as the murderer you've already been branded as despite being cleared of that, she knew they wouldn't stop till one of you surrendered and would follow you to the ends of the realm, that's why she had us call you here. She was doing everything she could think of to protect you and you going back after her would not only be going against her express wishes but would be undoing everything she strived to avoid. Is that really how you want to go down? You think you're pissed now, you do not want her pissed at you no matter how much she loves you."

"Are you actually trying to make me fear my own wife?" Loki asked her incredulously.

Zari stepped into the circle binding him defiantly and got real close to him without actually touching him. "I'm telling you what I know, you will destroy more than her plans by ruining them for her. Don't fuck this up, put your rusted brass ego aside for once in your life and think about what she wants. She could've wiped the floor with the lot of them and she didn't, try to understand!"

Loki was quiet then, and not just because there was so much rage and venom in Zari's tone he actually thought she was going to attack him physically and he didn't know if he could stop her, he didn't know if he wanted to either. "Then what am I to do? While she's in their clutches, am I supposed to just let them have their way with her, like they did with my daughter, like Hydra did with my wife?"

"Actually we make our own plans around hers," another voice intervened and everyone turned to where the new voice came from.

"Bucky?" Loki murmured with a raised eyebrow. "What are you doing here?"

"Seems you're the only one out of the loop on this whole fiasco and from what I heard for good reason," Bucky summed up with a smirk of his own. 

"This day just gets better and better," growled Loki in annoyance.

"Don't act like you're not impressed, believe it or not, this whole planning ahead for the worst thing came from you, before you came along she made everything up as she went and it didn't always pan out that great," Zari informed him. "Case and point, getting snagged by Hydra. She knew something big and bad had taken an interest in her after she blew up a building so she just up and booked it to another country, laid low and hoped they'd forget before returning here when she got bored of England. That was all on the spot actions for her as I didn't know what or where she was doing it till it was already happening."

"Why did she include you though, no offense," Loki asked Bucky.

"Because I have experience in taking down large corrupt organizations, I can't be tracked down or charged for doing it as I've already had that happen before so that would be as we Americans would call double jeopardy plus I'm a damn good sniper so I could clear you a path so you don't get stuck with murdering people and prove them all right." Bucky crossed his arms over his chest in challenge to Loki's logic and grinned at him as if daring him to even more. "Hell, I'm so impressed with her doing all this, if she wasn't married I'd ask her myself, I love it when they take charge like that."

"Easy there, handsome, there's already a line forming for her undead lily ass," Zari warned. "Apparently she caught the eye of another realm's king too while she was off defending this one here on his home world. Also I thought you had a thing for tall, muscular blonds."

"Considering said person is now grey haired and wrinkled now and also happily married, that's going to be a hard pass for me," Bucky replied smoothly.

"Look at you picking up the lingo," Zari teased. "Within another decade or two, you might actually be caught up with the times."

"If you two are quite done flirting with each other," groaned Loki, not the least bit amused by their own light bantering. "Can I be unbound now?"

"Swear to us you will not go after her, swear to us you will not go on on your agenda and go against her wishes that she put a lot of effort, planning, and thought into," Zari replied harshly. "Get on your knees and swear it."

"I beg your pardon?" Not even Nell would tell him to kneel and he pretty much would do anything on her command at times.

"Then get on your knees and beg," Zari hissed and her eyes went from their usual deep brown to glowing golden.

Before Loki knew what she was doing, he felt himself slowly drop to his knees in front of her, silently fuming she had that kind of power over him as he was still and utterly bound by her and the coven, he would have words about this later with Nell no doubt. "I swear."

"If you break this vow, you will suffer till we see fit as a coven that you have endured enough, agreed?" A murmur of agreement swept through the circle of women. "We release you from our binds, Loki Laufeyson."

It felt like a great weight if not a noose had been lifted off Loki then and he returned to his feet, standing a bit taller and straighter and with a very displeased glare at Zari as he did. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you enjoyed bringing me to my knees."

"Well do you? "

"What?"

"Do you know better?"

Loki had to remind himself that she was still Nell's best friend and with him not wanting to keep any secrets from her and her being a conduit of the dead, Nell would absolutely know he killed her and would never forgive him for it and he couldn't live with the one person he loved more than himself turning her back on him. "I thought we had an understanding of each other if not friendship."

Zari blinked, surprised by his statement as she had expected there to be even more of a fight if not sassing from him. "We do, we both want Nell safe and back in one piece, we both love her and would do anything for her but in order for that to happen you need know what would be in her best interest which means letting yours go first."

Loki wondered how the two of them had become friends so long ago as while they were both powerful magically powered women, they were complete opposites as Nell was usually constantly proven wrong by Loki but Zari was now constantly proving him wrong. It was infuriating but he couldn't deny or argue with her logic there.

"I might not have known all you that long, but I don't think anyone's ever shut down Mr. Silvertongue here like you can. Can I have your number?" asked Bucky.


	18. Stop Me If You've Heard This One

"I'm having trouble trying to sleep,

I'm counting sheep and running out,

As time ticks by

And still I try

No rest for mortals in my mind

On my own, here we go!" I sang while banging the beginning chords of the song with a fist against the glass.

"Wasn't expecting punk rock from you if I'm being honest," Barton told me as he walked in.

"I can do metal like I'm sure you were expecting, give me a moment to get in the mood though," I offered.

"Is it that obvious?"

"I mean you're not wrong, I fucking love metal music but yeah, when you're associated with death the number one guess everyone has for your taste in music is metal," I shrugged innocently and wished I had access to some kind of music controls where I was, craving my favorite metal band at the thought of it. "You seem in better...everything since we last talked. Finally got that poisoned arrow out of your ass?"

Barton scowled at me or at least I think he was, he seemed to have a resting murder face at the same time which was...confusing to say the least. "It's your husband I have problems with, not you, not yet at least."

"You were okay with him hanging out with the A team from what I remember."

"That's because the team grounded me, kept things light and loose and fun and distracted me from why I hated Loki, now that they're either dead or disbanned though, there's nothing to keep me off track from that."

"I'm no expert on the living, but that can't be healthy for you, hanging onto that much hate that long, it's been how many years since he was tortured and warped into making you do what someone else that obliterated your entire family wanted done?"

He was definitely glaring at me then. "Don't make him into another victim! You weren't there, for either of those things! You don't know!"

"I know him," I hissed. "And don't go brandishing his reputation as the god of lies around like that's all he knows because word on the street is he blatantly told you all the truth when he was in my position now and you all ignored him and it bit you in the ass repeatedly. If you're going to keep believing he's all he's known for as a god of lies then I'll do you one better, how does someone with eyes like a hawk not see any of that shit coming? You say you see better from a distance yet you didn't see any of what came after? Riddle me that, birdman."

Later I would be told that probably wasn't the best thing to say as someone else he let slip through his fingers said that to him before he died. Oops. Barton snapped then and without saying a word unlocked the cell and before I could slip out, he charged in with a no longer resting murder face but an active one, his bow dropped behind him meaning he wanted to kill me with his bare hands. Better than his replacement but between not being trained by Russians and head clouded with rage, not as good as Nat, he came at me with powerful, well aimed fists and knee thrusts. Several times my head snapped back with a punch to the face or I bent from one or two to the gut, truthfully I held back as I still kinda liked and respected him despite his hatred for my husband, mortals and their silly grudges. It wasn't long before more agents including Bishop and Nick were flooding into the room, weapons drawn and pointed at us both as it was still sorta an enclosed space and we were in close range combat, Nick demanding Barton stand down and get out of the cell. Barton of course didn't hear any of that, his perfect sight on me the entire time and no one else. At some point, he used the cell walls to run up them and over me, landing behind and grabbing my head before twisting and for a moment my vision went black and I felt myself fall. Faintly, I heard Barton step back, cursing and growling and agents coming in and pulling him away while my body started repairing the snapped neck. I myself started cursing as I slowly got to my feet, my vision coming back but I was definitely not facing where I wanted to and got a glimpse of my backside.

"Fuck me, I forgot how much that sucks," I muttered to myself while holding onto my head and speeding up the repairs by straightening forward with a sickening snap, grinning when a few agents started to look a bit green or turn away in disgust. Feeling mostly fixed I turned my head to both sides, my spine cracking where it had been snapped as it settled itself. "You know, that sorta move only really works in the movies unless done properly the first time, people can just go paralyzed with a snapped neck, which personally I'd rather die again than be a vegetable, veggies suck, meat all the way." I looked over at a horrified but still pissed Barton. "No hard feelings, Hot Guy, if I was still alive, that might've worked." Naturally after Barton was pulled out and before I got to my feet, the cell was sealed shut again, clever boys. I sat back down on the bench, seeing my fun was over and arched an eyebrow at Nick curiously. "That all you got, or you thirsty for more?"

"You'll drive my agents mad but you won't kill them, do you just enjoy watching them suffer, is that it?" Fury demanded.

"They're going mad from their own sins, you asshat, I'm just opening their eyes to them. Do you want me to kill them? Kinda sounds like you do, considering you're not the first to ask why I haven't. You're more than welcome to volunteer as tribute."

"You're just like Loki, making threats to kill people while completely contained by the very people you're threatening."

I cackled at this. "I'm sorry, correct me if I'm wrong but he fucking escaped your little cell first chance he had and fooled his brother into being contained in his place, you didn't have any control over him till the very end when the damage had already been done." I looked back at Barton smugly. "Told ya I know him." This of course set off Barton all over again and he lunged for me but was this time stopped by the agents that had pulled him out of my cell. I wiggled my fingers in a wave at him mockingly. 

"Then why haven't you escaped yet?" Fury demanded.

"Patience is a virtue, old Fury, not just something that doctors need to pay the bills. Don't know what your hurry is here, I got nothing but time." Especially if you believe the old ways that say I carry an hourglass on me during the apocalypse, seems more extra than that giant time piece that rapper dude wears around his neck, we get it you're rich and and have a large clock, big deal. Absently I wondered how long I'd been stuck in here though, there were no windows or any means of telling time and when I was with Hydra I thought I'd only been there a few weeks, boy was I off the mark on that. 

"Tell me this then, what did you do with my best agent Changeling?" Fury growled.

"You mean Lena, if there's one thing I learned from Silence of the Lambs its giving someone a name humanizes them and connects them to others, did you know that? Is that why you refer to the young woman in Loki's rightful custody as her codename or just It? So you don't have to think about how you warped or reprogrammed a living, growing half human as more than a weapon?" I tilted my head to the side innocent but my gaze on his one eye sharpened to a finite point. "Did you know about that, Barton? You should, you have your own daughter to think about, maybe you should imagine what your dear ole boss has been doing recently. As if she hadn't already been through enough with Hydra killing her mother and torturing her endlessly to do their dirty work, Fury swoops in once they've scattered and uses her to finish what they started by sending her in to go after her own father." I turned my gaze to Barton completely. "Imagine that because if anyone can, it's someone who already has kids to look after."

He looked like he didn't want to believe it at first but slowly it started to sink in and he turned to Fury then. "Is this true?"

"Do you actually believe anything she's been saying? She's married to the god of lies here!" Fury spat.

I cackled at this as well, it was just like I told him not to do, throwing around a namesake to cover your own flaws, throwing shade and displacement here and there. That was all I needed because Barton then shrugged off the dudes holding onto him and turned to Fury instead of me. "You used an actual victim of Hydra's the exact same way they already had, then you're no better than they are and what was the point of us flushing them out of Shield if you're just doing their work in the end?"

"Agent Barton, you can't honestly be considering any merit, you know me, she's just trying to turn us against each other."

"You told me she was a mutant that was just looking for a job, you told me..." Barton was no longer angry at me or Loki now, see, I knew I liked him for a reason. "She was his daughter!" He took out his gun quicker than quick and aimed it at Fury and now half the guns aimed at me were now on him.

"Her mother was an Inhuman from what Loki recalls, nothing Scarlet Witch-y, just a human lie detector which comes in handy when hunting down the god of lies as you seem to be stuck calling him." I turned my attention to Bishop then who looked conflicted about who to aim her arrows at now. "I told you, the Avengers have good souls in the end, Barton included, even if he wants my husband dead."

"Lower your weapon, Agent Barton, and someone put a muzzle on the necromancer here before she turns anyone else against me," snapped Fury.

"You won't be returning with any of your fingers or face if you think of bringing them near mine," I warned the agents lightly. "You know what people are saying about the dead being buried in glass cases? Remains to be seen."

That was the difference between Loki and me being in the same place and situation, when he was encased in here, under the control of Thanos, while he was being entirely truthful to them, he wasn't exactly subtle about his intentions either, his mannerisms unfortunately shown him in a very wicked light despite it not being his fault. The smooth yet dark tone he used could be pegged almost as sinister despite the smiles he threw. I kept things light and joking, where he either sat or stood straight, pacing and plotting, I pretty much just let it all go and relaxed because where I sat, things were still looking pretty good for me. Not as good looking as Loki himself but can't have everything I suppose. 

"Notice how even though he knows my name, he refuses to use it because that would make me seem just a little bit more human to him," I noted to anyone willing to listen. "In case any of you were wondering, it's Nell, long time necromancer first time captive. Tell you one thing though, if you don't do archery, you won't be spared, both Hawkeyes can confirm I've spared them, one still wants to know why, girl, why the fuck do I need a reason?!" I arched an eyebrow at Bishop just the keep her on her toes.

"There you go with your idle threats again," sneered Fury.

"Hold on, Kate is this true? She spared you?" Barton asked curiously.

"She knocked me out back at the mall, it looked like she wasn't really trying either honestly," Kate answered. "Felt like I got hit by a truck but somehow nothing was broke, just really really sore."

Barton just kinda stared at me like I performed this unheard of miracle that I couldn't help but just shrug and smile in response to. "She's just a kid, for fuck's sake! Just like Loki's except she ages super slow which is confusing as those files we swiped say she's much much older than she looks but definitely still acts like how old she looks. The difference, I'm assuming, is that your kid with the archery hasn't been brainwashed and tortured into doing your bidding, it's all free will and good intentions, how a kid agent should be trained so maybe take notes? What the fuck is wrong with you people?! You could've sent her to Wakanda like you did the other retrieved Hydra victim but oh no, if they're not associated with Captain Rogers, then they're fair game, is that it?"

"Someone shut her up!" barked Fury, the veins in his bald dome bulging.

Two agents moved toward my cell but it was Barton that stopped them and stood in their way by the entrance. "You've done nothing to deny any of her accusations, only throw accusations back at her which usually implies she's onto something, sir. You sent a victim of trauma into a more traumatic situation without any regards, to me that sounds like cruel and unusual punishment which is funny enough illegal and even we're not above the law here."

Fury aimed his own firearm at Barton then. "You're one of my best agents and the original six, don't make me shoot you, you have a family to get back to."

"And you tried to pit a family against each other here, she's right, of all the people here, I can understand the severity of it better than most. As horrible as Loki has been in the past to me and to New York, between him and Thor, they've already had enough family issues, look at what it did to Thor when he thought his own brother was dead."

Barton had a good point I hadn't even thought of. "Hey Clint, what are the chances of you conveying any of this to Thor, I'm sure he'd love to know how his brother fares in his absence."

"Now hold on just a minute," Fury started, his voice no longer powerful and confident as it was mere seconds ago.

"You think you're under pressure just pissing off one Norse god and his wife, let's see how you handle two." You mess with one Asgardian, you mess with the whole set.


	19. Fall Till We Bleed

Clint was convinced it was a bad idea to let me out but being the nice guy I knew he was deep down, he refused to let anyone put a muzzle on me. He did however return to where I was being held to talk, no longer having a chip on his shoulder about me or Loki.

"Come a little bit closer,

Before we begin,

Let me tell you how I want it

And exactly what I need," I started singing when he walked in.

Clint chuckled at me switching to metal but actually did come closer and reached for the lights but I shook my head at him.

"Leave them off, the dark is calming to me," I explained.

"Do you even want me to let you free?" he asked curiously.

"I haven't decided yet, honestly thought they'd be doing more than just keeping me locked in here by now, run tests or something nefarious like that. What you can do for me though is go home and don't come back here, not for a while. Go to your family, you're a good man, Clint, would hate to see you be a ghost to Fury like the other dead agents. Take Bishop with you, if I wanted her dead I would've done it at the mall."

"What do you plan to do while you're here?"

Even if I sensed his intentions were good with that question, even though I knew he was changing sides, the walls, the foundation itself still had eyes and ears everywhere. "Giving these people a taste of their own medicine."

"Do I have any other ghosts around me?"

"Nat was the only one, how I know you're a good man, bad ones have more. Loki only had his mother floating around him till I let her pass to the great beyond or most likely Valhalla."

"You can do that? Exorcise them?"

"Exorcising much like another word I don't like doing that sounds the same, is more forceful. Priests do it on demons and angry spirits, neither of which want to leave where they're haunting then as their unfinished business is still that, unfinished. I'd be a really shitty necromancer if I just chucked them back to where they should be by then and shitty necromancers don't become as powerful as I am."

"What do you do then?"

"To the best of my abilities, either give them the power to let them finish their business or do it for them. I'm not forceful with the dead, that takes more effort than I'd like to put into doing what I want them to do, same for the walking dead. I ask them for help and there's always restless ones wanting to help in some way."

Clint was quiet for a moment. "I remember you said that when we first took you into the compound. I guess with all that's happened since and Fury dead set on extracting one of you and having us believe you're a threat to the country if not the planet that I forgot just because you're surrounded by dead bodies, doesn't mean you were the one that killed them."

"That's another thing, takes even more effort to raise a body I killed myself, I mean would you want to help a sister out after I just ended your life?"

Clint blinked in surprise, having not considered that thought as well. "None of those zombies were by your hand."

I shook my head with a grin. "There are of course other necromancers who don't respect the dead's wishes and still go ahead and do that dick move, doesn't really work in their favor one way or another. The zombies go feral or the mancer gets sloppy or just exhausted from the extra effort forcing their will into the dead. There is a branch off of necromancers though that have figured out how to put a different contained soul into a restless dead body in order to make the body do what you want, very tricky, very dangerous though."

"And you don't do that?"

I shook my head vigorously again. "The only thing I can do with someone's soul is rip it out of them, I don't know how they manage to give it another meat suit as a soul is a powerful thing in itself." 

"Can a person survive without a soul?"

"It's not like Indiana Jones where they chant Khali Mah and somehow even without a heart the person is still totally fine just scared shitless. Just grabbing onto the soul is excruciatingly agonizing, once it's out there, you're done. You don't become some cold, careless person like Sam Winchester after being free from Lucifer, you dead."

"Can other necromancers do that?"

"None I've met and thanks largely to Hydra, probably never will."

"Favorite metal band?"

"In This Moment of course." I sneered at him like the lead singer was known for. 

"Did it hurt when I snapped your neck?" there was actually some guilt in his voice then.

I shrugged it off. "Was no picnic, that's for damn sure, especially finding out my ass looked like it does this whole time and no one telling me. Gonna have to rethink my wardrobe after all this is done."

"That's a thing? I thought that was a stereotypical joke in the movies that women aren't a fan of their own asses and don't like what they see when they see it."

"And how do you think the movie makers got to that conclusion?" I asked smugly. "There's always a bit of truth hidden in fiction. Loki didn't give birth to an eight legged horse but Thor tells me Odin had one before he died."

"You're telling me those old myths are more half and half than one way or the other?"

"The tales say he's brothers with Odin and thus Thor's uncle but Loki's younger than Thor despite being the more mature of the brothers."

"What are some myths about you then? Where is the line drawn?"

"Oh I'm sure you remember the common ones I pointed out when we met. We don't wear skimpy black outfit that barely cover our naughty bits, bone jewelry is both tacky and impractical not to mention a tad bit disrespectful to the one thing we respect the most."

"Beyond appearances then?"

"The smart ones like myself do not mess with the damned, necromancy isn't dark magic, it's death magic and you need dark magic to associate with the damned, there have been some that attempt to juggle both branches, I highly wouldn't recommend it."

"What happens then?"

"What happens when anyone tampers with powers they have very little experience with, they get fucked." I went silent, remembering previous encounters with mages that went to the Dark Side and completely lost themselves in it, becoming unrecognizable, a shell of what I knew. 

"Nell?" Clint called back to me as I was getting sucked into bad memories.

"Magic you weren't designed, weren't built with comes with a price, one very seldom can pay and if you can't pay it in full...beware the repo men."

"What's the worst you've seen to that?"

"People that weren't satisfied with what they could already control, they wanted to control creatures from below the surface, hellhounds, lesser demons, maybe even stronger demons, almost like they wanted to raise hell themselves. The more you demand of hell, the more it takes from you in turn, and these people in their thirst for more became so warped by the very thing they wished to control, they became part of it themselves. It corrupted them, like a disease in a sense, ate away at their soul, their morals, their very being till there was nothing left but hell itself, the person that was once inside that body no longer there but taken straight to the source for eternal torment."

"You're saying they became..."

"Demonic, demons aren't always straight born from blood and hellfire, the old ones probably are but not all of them."

"So on top of aliens, zombies, gods, and liches which I didn't even know was a thing till now, you're telling me demons exist too?"

"You forgot ghosts," I mused. "It's sad so few people believe in them, but then that's why they have me, init? No one believed in Loki till he came and kicked their asses. If it weren't for him, the Chitauri would've done exactly what they came here to do in the first place, you know? He brought you all together when he showed up, think about it. And then the fucking Accords had to come and ruin that glorious team of yours that had sent the Chitauri packing with their mechanical tails between their legs, your own people have always been your enemy."

Clint was quiet for a long moment. "I know. I was forced out of retirement because of the government of all things. That's your goal here, isn't it?"

I grinned and winked at him. "By Jove, I think he's got it!"

"You sure you don't want me to stick around for any of it?"

"I appreciate the offer and all, but like I said, you have a family to look after, and seeing as these people just tried to rip mine apart in one fell swoop, would hate to have another actually have that happen to them on my account. Don't forget to take Bishop with you."

They flooded the room and I had to wonder how easy it would be for me if he didn't have his own little army protecting him, Fury that is. Clint and Bishop had already left so now there was no reason for either of us to hold back at this point, I had already warned Fury what would happen after he made his move on me, it would all be on him including what I planned to do anyway. Fury wanted me out of the cell for something from the look of it as I was literally just sitting there when they came in all at once, blocking all exits and several coming into my cell from the one exit nearest me. They came in either with weapons or with fists, me easily dodging their flimsy attack, breaking or locking their wrists and forcing them to drop it or I just broke the wrists so they couldn't pummel me then broke a leg so they couldn't kick me either. They dropped, injured and with broken spirits, like flies around my feet. 

"Hydra agents put up more of a challenge than yours, Fury, this is barely even sport," I taunted. "What are you feeding them besides bullshit? Do you even take them out for walkies?"

Fury said nothing but raised a hand to signal his dogs to continue or perhaps to start something completely different as the agents around that had yet to get too close to me took out bigger weapons, weapons that weren't bullets or blades but firearms with much more firepower than a mortal should be wielding which meant they've been attempting to harness power not meant for them, much like they did with the infinity stones. "Set to half power." The small hand canons of firearms started to glow and I wondered if these were the same kind of guns as what a certain Son of Coul used on Loki when he was breaking out of this place. I already knew I wouldn't be able to dodge that big a blast as I was betting would come from a hand canon of that caliber and attempted to brace myself for what came next. I was thrown back to the far walls of the cell with such force if I had air in my rotted lungs before I was hit, I definitely wouldn't after. It felt like the biggest snowbeast I'd ever ridden had charged at me head first and then trampled me to make sure I stayed down which is exactly what I did after falling to the floor after hitting the wall. They wasted no time once the dust cleared to swoop in, cuff me and muzzle me just like Hydra had done years before and I was lifted up and dragged out of my cell, my vision hazy and dark.

"I might not be able to kill the dead, but I'm betting I can still open it up and see what makes it tick," Fury sneered.

I laughed at him, black blood bubbling up and dripping out of my mouth. "You'd make a terrible mortician."


	20. Oh Gods, Heaven Knows

They wouldn't and couldn't find much from a biopsy, I can tell you that much, which is what they had planned, while I could clearly be knocked out, stunned or subdued temporarily, there wasn't anything in their arsenal to stop the instant healing when they tried to dissect me. Blood they took from my mouth I couldn't even tell what it was actually made up of on a scientific level but Hydra had already tried that before and their data came up as inconclusive, stating only that it was considered stale and had no special properties other than that it was in fact black, not just a really really really dark red color. Tissue/skin samples they managed to slice off were much the same results, that it was long since dead, came from a dead body, and wasn't going to change or tell them anything else anytime soon. They at one point tried to shove one of those god awful camera scope things into me first from my mouth only for me to bite it out of commission and spit the piece still inside me back out, any other orifice they even mentioned trying it on got them bitten instead of the instrument and as I was seen as a sentient zombie to them and did nothing to convince them otherwise, they fled fearing they'd be zombies too after that. They really should've considered putting the muzzle back on after I bit off the one shoved down my throat but they thought with me no longer making quips after being knocked down that they finally had the upper hand. Boy were they wrong. Think I lost count how many agents I injured since I was taken into this place, bitten, broken, or otherwise bleeding. It wasn't that I enjoyed entirely, well that's only half true, I enjoyed scaring them off after, watching fully grown, built and trained men run off from a funsized woman with a bone to pick and a hell of a lot more to break. Things finally came to a turn when I managed to grab hold of an agent and use her as a shield despite still being in cuffs, much like Captain Sparrow did with Keira Knightly in the first movie. That was all it seemed to take to make them back off if only for a moment while I looked over Agent Hill's shoulder at Fury who for once wasn't all about fury but worry as well for the safety of his best agent after Barton booked it.

"Let her go," Fury demanded but I kept myself out of any line of fire and sight that I could see myself, not a hard thing when one was shorter than their shield.

"Let me go first and I might consider it," I growled at him, not loosening my grasp on the stiff but unfazed woman in front of me.

"You have nowhere to go from here, that's not an option, let her go."

"I have nowhere to go? Bitch, I'm going home!"

Fury went from worry and stress to looking like he finally got me in a checkmate, his poker face dissolving into one of someone who had the final move ready. "I'd like to see you try."

"Give me a clear path out of here and I'll release her then."

Fury's expression didn't change in the slightest but it did shift to Hill's face. "Are you okay, Agent Hill?"

"I'm fine, sir?"

"If any of you so much as charges one of those stolen tech hand canons I'll do to her what Barton attempted to do to me before he left," I warned.

Fury held up both hands in mock surrender then lowered them, signalling his agents to stand down as well and they begrudgingly did as instructed and let me slowly and carefully make my way out of the lab they were trying to get science answers from. Once I was sure I wasn't being scoped out or followed I lightly thrust Hill into a wall, just enough to knock her out but not enough to cave her head in and kill her and booked it. I ran down several coridors and hallways, struggling to figure out where the actual exit building of this damn maze was and didn't slow down in my search for a way out till the last door was unlocked and without looking around to figure out my location I ran and nearly fell to my next death as the wind whipped and thrashed around me and my stomach started doing gymnastics in anywhere it shouldn't be inside me. This part I definitely did not expect nor plan for and I sincerely wished I had Loki's expertise on improvising or memory even as that was one thing I completely forgot was part of his own capture on here, he was taken to the Hellicarrier. I took a few shaky steps back, my heart in my throat despite none of my insides actually working to begin with and looked around, nothing but blue and cloudy skies.

"Still think we're like Hydra?" a voice came from what had to be the ship's intercom. "Their mistake was that they couldn't keep you off the ground after containing you, we can though."

I knew I wouldn't stay dead if I fell off this death trap, but I would definitely be out of commission for a while, kind of like in a coma where there was no telling how long I would be in that state and I couldn't do that to Loki, give him that kind of hellish uncertainty not knowing if and when I'd wake up when we had only just tied the knot and found a kid for ourselves. What were my options then? Could I fool them into believing I had no problem jumping and back off? Not bloody likely, history has shown bluffing like that usually backfires on the one doing it. So this is what it felt like when a tiger was caught in a poacher's trap. Two apex predators staring each other down, the clearly cornered one refusing to break even in the face of doom. If I couldn't escape off this thing, I'd just have to survive long enough to either wait for my backup plan to be set in motion or come up with another one on the spot and hope for the best then. I turned to face even more agents all waiting on me to just surrender and come back inside peacefully. If they shot me now with that canon then they'd knock me off and we'd both lose which meant while I was still cornered, I could arm myself with less to worry about in retaliation. power built in my chest and spread down to my arms into my opened hands, I'm a strong, independent necromancer who don't need no zombies to take down the living. 

The plan wasn't to escape anyway, it was to get to the root of this whole fiasco and shut it down, so escaping wasn't even on the menu till they mentioned shoving medical equipment up my naughty parts. I narrowed my eyes at them, gathering more and more power before letting out one more bloodcurdling shriek of bloodlust and rage and charged at them all head on, no longer in the mood to spare their lives in favor of injuries, if I was going down, I was dragging them all to hell with me. I plowed my way through the agents, narrowly dodging when I could while not slowing down at all, they wanted me back inside, the doors I unlocked to get to the deck of the ship were still open. They didn't get a chance to start up their canons I already reached them before they could fire it and snatched one right out of an agent's grasp, smashing his head with it and setting it to full power without breaking my stride. I didn't know where I was going to go from inside the thing, but if there's one thing I learned from the actress turned singer who was the doppelganger of my psycho ex girlfriend, it was I belonged way down below, if not on ground level then the lowest level of this sky fortress. Anyone that came in contact with the power I was building around me was instantly thrown off hard enough they died from the impact of whatever they hit, that was how my magic worked with most mortals, the magic itself wouldn't kill you, whatever you touched after would instead. Eventually I came to a sealed off room with reinforced locked doors and not being Loki that could hack into anything in a matter of seconds, I opted for force and let my stolen tech gun blast a hole through all the sealed doors before finding exactly what I had intended to when I first surrendered to these apes. 

Loki had taught me a few things while we scrolled through sealed files we had stolen, how to access certain things and tamper with them a bit. So that's what I did, with a finger I had literally bitten off from an agent trying to shove things in me I did not consent to, I got access to the files I was after and searched for anything and all things Loki, Changeling, Evelena, and Bucky just because he deserved to have a clean slate and I didn't trust that had been done for him thoroughly. Once I found everything in the files and database was brought up, including things from Hydra and any kind of incriminating info or footage, with instruction Bucky himself had told me when I called for his help in all this, I sent it to a very trustworthy contact before deleting it right as the agents found me and all aimed their now fully charged and prepped fire canons at me.

"Step away and stand down, now, I won't ask again," Fury barked at me.

He couldn't stop them from being sent or deleted at this point, I had the system locked and even if he fried or destroyed the tech, it would just slow it down, it was already on its way out. So I did as he commanded and stepped aside, the power I had used to more or less blow people up returning to its reserves as I had finished what I came here to do and looked him in the eye confidently. "What's the magic word?"

"How about, fire?"

That's when the whole ship thing shook before the agents could squeeze the trigger or press the button that fires their new glowy toy of destruction. It shook again and then dipped to one side for a moment before stabilizing. 

"What the hell is going on up there?" demanded Fury, a hand pressed to the earpiece he was wearing. "This isn't over, you still have nowhere to go from here. Keep your weapons trained on her, men, I'm going to see what kind of turbulence is causing this."

I didn't move from I stood, my eyes now watching the agents around me carefully, whatever was going on up there, I didn't want to get knocked out again and miss the fun. 

"The only thing worse than a monster, is the one that chooses to marry them," sneered one of the men.

"You sound like you have some experience there, have you tried marriage counselling?" I asked innocently.

"Think yourself funny, do you?" the agent spat.

"Your colleagues can't seem to keep a straight face so clearly it's not just me thinking that."

"Fury didn't say anything about holding fire on her," the agent informed the others watching me. "What are we waiting for here?" He powered up his canon again and took aim while I both braced myself and gathered power into my fists one more time, I was going to enjoy ripping him to pieces if it was the last thing I remembered doing on this death trap.


	21. It All Comes Back Threefold

I was thrown back, thankfully not quite enough to knock me out again but it was definitely a struggle to stay off my feet after being shot at by those evil firearms, he must have changed the setting to not quite half power meaning he wanted to just keep shooting at me but didn't want me down for the count. I bared my bloodied teeth at him while struggling to stand, leaning against the control panel for the main computer I had been messing with for support. He took aim a second time, a smug smirk on his already displeasing face to match the 90's style villain he already looked like. 

"Stand down, Agent, no one gave you permission to use her as target practice," Hill's voice commanded before she herself walked into the room and crossed her arms.

"How's your head doing?" I attempted to ask casually.

Her gaze flickered to mine briefly and something flashed in her eyes before they returned and hardened on the agent that had shot me. "That's an order, lower your guns and stand down."

"You're not our commanding officer, we take orders from Fury alone and if he wanted that done he would've told us on our coms," the 90's villain agent told her.

"In that case..." She took out her hand gun and shot the agent in the head right as he turned his attention to her.

He crumbled, his canon dropping beside him loudly and the other agents looked conflicted between following her orders or aiming at her. She however didn't hesitate and shot everyone closest to me without missing a beat, the ones closest to her booked it when she pointed her gun at them in turn. I myself was confused why she was defending me and attempted to stand up better to defend myself against her but before I could gather what little power I still could call forth, a tall flash of green and black rushed at me right as my strength seemed to waver and my legs gave out as apparently my magic couldn't be split between power blasts and physical support. I didn't hit the floor as I expected but two strong, familiar arms caught me as my vision temporarily went dark and I caught the scent of spices, mint, and leather and wanted to cry. I grasped onto those arms for dear afterlife, not realizing how exhausted I was till I actually let myself go.

"You came," I breathed in relief.

"For you, my love, don't I always?" he purred.

I started to laugh though it quickly turned into choking on my own blood for a moment. 

"What have they done to you?" he asked, scooping me up quickly and glancing over at Hill who then winked at me.

"Asgardian powered guns," I groaned, "not nearly as lethal as you powered guns but still packs a punch."

"Oh Thor is going to love this," growled Loki. "Good to go, Barnes?" he asked Hill.

Hill nodded with a very cocky grin only Bucky could master and if I wasn't still clogged up with blood I would've laughed at the brilliance of it. "You okay there, Annabelle?"

"Stick with Tiffany for creepy dolls, Annabelle is just a possessed raggedy Ann."

Bucky/Hill chuckled before switching guns more long range and accurate and went ahead of us as cover. Where Bucky would shoot down any in our way out, Loki would shield with his magic anyone Bucky missed that aimed at us before we reached the deck once more and having just been there moments before, I uncharacteristically clung to Loki and buried myself into his chest as much as I could. He looked down at me worriedly, feeling me tense and vulnerable and I could feel the rage building in his chest as he brought us to one of those fighter jets they had parked in the back. At that point, Loki simply held off the firing from the agents while Bucky easily got access to the jet, taking me from Loki's arms so Loki could cover us and buckled me in before starting it up. Loki then seeing we were all situated, poofed himself in as well once the jet was ready for take off and managed to dodge a grenade launcher and another of those damn Asgardian guns being shot at us before we were finally out of range.

It was only then, we all seemed to relax and Loki while keeping the jet hidden from radar with his magic checked on me. "Was it worth it?"

"You're no longer branded a threat, not officially at least, same for you, Bucky," I answered. "They had a lot of shit on all of us, footage from every angle since the moment you surfaced, they had it down to a science what they would do if Project Changeling was successful. To me, it was worth it, yes."

"Why didn't you tell me what you were planning? I could've helped."

"You did but you wouldn't have if I told you all the details, you would've wanted to be the one to surrender first instead and that's what they wanted, that's what they were counting on even."

"What did you do with your findings?" asked Bucky curiously.

"Sent them to a very reliable contact for proof of corruption and then deleted them as best I could, like you told me to. Thank you again by the way, Mr. Rogers should've chose you."

Bucky snorted at my title for his bff. "I'm way over it, no worries. This was fun, gonna suck going back to Sam, his missions aren't nearly this fun and brilliant."

"Glad we can be the cure to your boredom," I teased. "Don't be a stranger when that returns. You can't bring Sam though, don't know or trust him."

"That's fair."

We ended up landing not remotely near Salem or even America but in New Asgard of all places where waiting for us in the field we landed in was Brunhilde, Zari, and Lena as well. I still hadn't fully recovered from being shot at and allowed Loki to carry me out of the jet before insisting I at least attempt to walk but still using him for support at the same time so I could properly thank the Valkyrie for her aid.

"How did you know you could trust me?" she asked curiously.

"Thor trusts you with his life I would assume considering he married you and entrusted you with his people while he's off adventuring," I replied.

"What makes you think I should trust you in turn?" she countered.

I opened my mouth to retort but ended up spitting out more blood as an actual answer. "I'm just a corpse, standing in front of a warrior, asking her to help a girl out."

She couldn't help but smirk and motioned for the Asgardian healers that were standing by just a bit farther back from us to come help. "Loki...if you break her heart, if you do anything to hurt her, I'll kill you myself. Give this girl a drink while you're fixing her up, she might need a few."

"If I'm no longer needed in action, I'm going to take my leave and attempt to date your very attractive best friend," Bucky informed me.

My eyebrows disappeared into my hairline. "Damn dude, go get some, some tips though before you leave. She loves cajun and Haitian food, cocktails with a bit of a spicy kick to it, being on top and spontaneously taking charge, and being eaten out in somewhat public places discreetly, that chance of being spotted is a turn on for her."

Bucky's jaw sort of loosened and dropped just enough it actually was a very cute way to look surprised at just how well I knew one of the few ex lovers I still stayed in touch with on top of being bff's with. "Thank you!" he managed to choke out before bolting back for the jet.

"He wasn't even remotely innocent and you still seemed to have broken him through that," mused Loki.

"I mean he came from a time where that was more taboo than dead baby jokes, it's not as hard as you'd think."

Loki chuckled at this.

The healers tried their best but even I could've told them their area of expertise no matter how long they've been around to perfect it, only really worked on the living. Eventually they had to release me on not being able to do much else for me, at which point I was able to walk on my own and explore New Asgard for a bit before finding Loki with Lena and Brunhilde again, Zari had apparently snuck onto the jet Bucky had stolen for us and flew off with him.

"So what's your decision then?" Loki asked Lena. "Do you want to stay with Noelle and myself, go rogue like Barnes, or dare I ask with Shield?"

Lena was quiet in contemplation for a moment before looking from me to Loki to back to me. "Could I stay with you two?"

"We wouldn't suggest it if we didn't want you to choose it," I told her dryly.

"Shouldn't you be resting," sassed Loki.

"Tried it, didn't fit me the right way," I replied easily. "Not remotely flattering either."

Loki rolled his eyes at me but held out a hand I easily grasped and was pulled onto his lap affectionately though a bit awkwardly for me because I had the grace of a baby giraffe. Brunhilda looked beyond amused by this little show of affection and arched an eyebrow at us.

"Well isn't this nice," she teased.

I looked up at Loki from my spot on his and our eyes met briefly though meaningfully. "Sometimes I fear we are cute," he admitted to me.

"Oh nigglesnoosh," I brushed off playfully. "If I didn't just come out of rehab, his hold would be much tighter and nigh unbreakable."

"Afraid of losing someone that can't die, Mr. Laufeyson?" Brunhilda sassed.

"Deathly afraid you might say," he replied.

"Thor said you two could be the most comfortable and fitting couple he's ever seen in all his life and I didn't believe it, that anyone could be that comfortable with you, Loki and yet...Drinks!" she called out the last part.

"Speaking of beefcake Barbie, were you able to reach him?" I asked curiously.

She chuckled and snagged one of the drinks offered to her by Korg who was passing through with some. "Dunno where he is or how long it will take for him to return if he decides to but I'm sure he got the message."

I nodded in satisfaction. "What do we do now then?"

"You're welcome to stay here for the time being, recover a bit more if you like. Once Thor found out you were alive and well, he had a little cottage built just for you two, hasn't been touched or lived in since so all yours. From what I've gathered though, they'll probably still be after you two even with your slates officially wiped clean, mortals are good for holding grudges like that."

I snickered, my thoughts exactly. "Was really hoping we'd finally have some peace once we defeated Thanos and got married, maybe we should take a vacation to Vanaheim, I'm told its quite lovely this time of year."

"It's nice every time of year," Loki replied dryly. "Thought you detested running away."

"I'm not running, just putting as much distance between them and us as possible while hopefully enjoying the view and some much needed quality us time."

"We'd have to take Lena with us, now that she's chosen our side, they'll be after her too."

"I'm sure it's a big realm, she can go have adventures and explore it while we explore each other some more."

"Please, for the love of Norns, go to the cottage already before I lose my lunch," groaned Brunhilda.

"You heard the nice equestrian, let's get shacked!"


	22. As Above So Below

Loki returned the three of us back to Salem after I was back to my regular badass self some distance from our house so we could grab some more things for Lena since she decided to stay with us for good as well as showed her some places she might like to check out for herself when she doesn't wanna hang with us cool immortals. There are a lot of cool places to meet new people in Witch City. Next we went to the central wiccan temple to meet with the grand high priestess on what to do about, well everything that happened since we got ourselves a daughter. It was after all the proper thing to do when living in a magically charged city secretly run by magic users under the guise of tourism and have invited another potential magic user to live with you. The practitioners were a lot like the Jedi Council in a way, they put the newcomer to a series of small tests to determine if the newbie is trustworthy, safe to others around them, and just how powerful they could be if push comes to shove without any of the tests being dangerous or traumatic themselves. Once that was squared away, we walked around a bit more so Lena got a feel for the city and wouldn't get too lost when she was out on her own as any immortal teenager would be these days, partying, experimenting with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, making new friends, all that fun stuff. For me it was more sex, drinks and heavy metal. Loki was fast starting to enjoy heavy metal once he got over how loud and gutteral the singers could be, he certainly looked like a metal head with the copious amount of black studded leather and long black hair that wasn't going short anytime soon, though I'd be a monkey's uncle if he started doing the head bang along to the music.

Once it got dark out as we walked around, that's when the real interesting people started to come out of their shops and homes and enjoy the oncoming darkness. That's also when I realized said people wouldn't be scared off by her blood red eyes and some of those said people were boys.

"Hey there, you must be new in town, who might you be?"

"How many bottles of Old Spice do you think he has on him?" I murmured to Loki who looked even less pleased his newfound daughter was getting males attention that wasn't just his. 

"Is that what I'm smelling? I thought that was the mortal scent of desperation," growled Loki back who glared daggers at the most stereotypical looking teenage white boy yet.

"Nah, that's what they're covering up," I informed him.

Lena eyed the boy curiously and cautiously, not sure how to approach him and clearly having been taught no social skills in her many years of training, the poor girl. "I'm Evelena, there something you want?"

"That sounds like something you'd say but your tone is more dry less confused," Loki noted in amusement. "Seems like she's decided to be your daughter too if she's picking up your mannerisms."

I couldn't help but smile fondly at this theory. "Should we take out for ice cream?"

"And spoil her dinner...absolutely," Loki agreed.

The dude attempted to get a bit too close for Lena's liking and promptly had his arm dislocated from his shoulder by her before she looked over at us with an expression that could've been apologetic. "That was instinctual, I couldn't help it."

"I dunno, hun, that sort of non-apologetic apology is your thing," I teased Loki. "Whatever you did to him, we approve, what's your favorite flavored ice cream?" I asked her. "Have you tried moosetracks?"

"Wait, she's your daughter, isn't she?" cried the injured idiot to me. "Aren't you going to do something about what she did to me?"

"Are you deaf, I already am," I told him boredly. "Run along now before you have no hands left to wank off with." I stared the boy down as he attempted to act all tough at me, Loki and Lena watching from the sidelines as Loki knew I could handle my own battles against the locals. The boy didn't back down till my eyes went milky on him then it somehow clicked who I actually was and he literally mumbled "the white walker" and bolted. I turned back to Loki. "Bitch called me a white walker, my nickname is a fucking foot soldier, how dare he? I'm the motherfucking Night Queen!"

"There are worse things to be called around here, like Christmas tree hair for one," muttered Loki. "Just because my hair was unkempt during my invasion that it came out wonky, as if I had time to tame it when I was being tortured and thrust into your realm."

I smiled ruefully at my husband and gave him a squeeze. "All nice and silky now, what kind of shampoo do you use? Loreal? Because you know you're worth it."

Loki just shook his head at me and chuckled before tilting my head up and dipping to kiss me chastely. "Remind me why I married you?"

"Old age finally got to your memory I see, you married me so no one else can have all this but you," I replied motioning over my body like I was the hottest thing since the Sahara Desert. 

We reached the ice cream parlor where naturally another young adult male happened to be working and kind of stared at her like she was the next goddess of love. "You have the most gorgeous eyes I have ever seen, please tell me they're real."

"My eyes? Yeah, I was born with them," Lena replied still as confused by boys as she was the first time.

"Social interaction or not, she's got the awkward 'what is this thing talking to me?' teenage act down pat," I told Loki.

"I'm going to assume that's a Midgardian thing as I wasn't nearly that awkward at her estimated age."

"You don't count, you were raised by royalty, totally different standards then."

Loki scoffed at being brushed aside essentially while Lena decided to do the smart but somewhat flirty thing and ask for a sample of each flavor to decide which she liked most to order. "If she keeps doing that thing with the spoon, he's not going to last much longer."

I arched an eyebrow, not sure what he meant to see her slowly licking the samples off her spoon with big eyes that closed when she found one she really liked and then I looked over at the boy behind the parlor counter struggling to breathe and found it hard to breathe myself trying not to laugh at the interaction going on there. "She's going to break so many hearts she'll leave a trail of male bodies in her wake for sure, not even Nat could do that I bet."

"She tried her charms on me a few times just to see if she could bend an alien like she does mortals," Loki remarked. "Formidable but as you can see, not what you Midgardians would say my type of girl."

"Oh I know, you like them cold and pale because deader is always better and the dead can't say no."

Finally Lena picked out three flavors she wanted the most for a three scoop treat Loki was more than happy to oblige, also glaring daggers at the boy while he paid for her. "Pull yourself together or I'm pulling out your small intestines through your nasal cavity."

I couldn't hold back the laughter then as Loki usually let me be the graphically creative one with threats, he was fast becoming a true Papa Bear the more attention his daughter seemed to attract. Maybe with him being so easily distracted and protective of her, he wouldn't worry so much about my own safety. One can hope, right?

We finally decided to head home after a few more hilariously awkward interactions between Lena and the locals, not wanting to overwhelm her all at once at what to expect living in Witch City.

"What a glorious night it is," commented Loki wistfully. "Not a cloud in sight, the stars are out, no light pollution most of your cities are known for."

"Salem isn't remotely big enough for that, Boston yes but not Salem," I told him. "Also helps there's no skyscraper buildings piercing through like Gondor calling for aid." I looked up at the sky myself hoping to see some of the few constellations I remember the names of. "Oh look a shooting star, make a wish Lena, Loki already got his with you."

Loki rolled his eyes at me but looked up at where I pointed it out and arched an eyebrow. "That's not a star, love, too close and too bright, I might be the older one here but you might need to have your eyes checked if you thought that."

"Satellite then?" I offered, glad I didn't have the ability to blush out of embarrassment.

"It's neither of those things actually," Lena spoke up. "That looks like the lights of a plane and getting closer?"

"Well Logan airport isn't that far from here so that would make sense," I clarified.

"No." Was all Lena could say before her eyes met Loki's wide and panicked and it must have clicked in his mind as he tensed and pulled her to him quickly, green swirls surrounding him as he made a move to me who was too stupid and eager to get to my home quicker before realizing something definitely was off about tonight as it was unnaturally quiet for a clear night and I spun around right at the doorstep and turned to Loki who was reaching for me.

"Fuck no," I managed to say before my home was obliterated in a deafening explosion and the world as I knew and loved was destroyed in front of me.


	23. Half God Half Devil

For a long, agonizing moment all I knew was ringing and the night sky before my hearing repaired itself and my ears were accosted by too many bad sounds at once, one of which was the source of the explosion as a quinjet not unlike the one that first took me from Hydra to the Avengers compound lowered itself from the sky to closer to where we were while still being out of range. Then came the agents dropping from ropes thrown off either side of the quinjet, all armed with those evil ray gun things as they swarmed our property. That was at least the first thing I picked up after being thrown yards away from what was left of my home. Oh god, my home was gone. Panic and rage filled my insides and compelled me to slowly get to my feet though a little bit wobbly from the impact of the explosion. I looked around me frantically, ignoring the charging armed agents. Where were Loki and Lena? Was he lucky enough to poof out of range from the blast in time? I couldn't see them anywhere where I had landed or near the debris. And then another fear came to my mind entirely seeing my house reduced to ash and splinters. Lady Catalie! If I couldn't find my husband and adopted daughter, I was sure as hell going to find my favorite pet. I charged into the wreckage furiously, calling her name in desperation and digging through the bits and pieces, all the while more and more rage and despair building me the longer I couldn't find her and power collecting from being attacked point blank. Where was everyone? Was this what it felt like in the movies when there was a scene of complete hell and utter chaos and somehow a child is left alone in the middle of it, crying for their mother in fear, that scene always filled me with frustration, what kind of mother just leaves their toddler alone in a state of panic when mothers in reality have been known to lift cars their children somehow become trapped under. 

"Get on your knees and lay down slowly!" an agent shouted at me.

"Come here and make me!" I snarled, whirling around to face him and advancing in a similar gait to Michael Myers, slow but menacing. 

I was done being merciful, done just injuring them, done letting my magic do the damage for me, I was going to kill them all with my bare hands for destroying my home and my cat. He shot at me with his canon only for me to catch it with a skeletal hand that didn't go back to fleshy knowing more would come before this was over. He shot at me again before needing the gun to recharge but wouldn't get it going in time as I was in front of him in an instant, yanked the gun from his grasp and smashed his face with it hard, he went down in a bloody mess. More came, each time they hit me, they hit nothing but burning bones that healed instantly, not slowing me down for more than a moment while I went after them. Seeing their high tech fire power no longer did any damage, they for some reason went back to regular bullets which let me shift back to mostly flesh aside from my hands and arms and half of my face just for added horror of what they were about to experience, they were so sure Loki was the real monster here and the last thing they would see is the ugly truth, that the real monster wasn't the alien dressed like a space viking but the bad lich he married. The next one that went down had his chest punched in and a severely destroyed stomach, another a broken jaw and a caved in skull, then came the one with all four limbs broken at different angles and their neck snapped. Every one that came at me died a different way but all fell to my hands. All around me were bodies and bits of my home, vaguely I wondered how they managed to fit so many agents on one quinjet, they weren't that spacious when I rode them. Three of them were left as well as the pilot of the jet but I was done doing this one on one crap and charged head on at all three on the ground, reaching out with one bony hand and plowing into the three of them neatly lined up, all three dropped when I stopped running and in my still outstretched hand was the collective glow of three souls I then hurled with the force of fury at the quinjet. It exploded in the sky, pilot and all raining down in a fiery blaze. The threat was gone but the ache in my chest still stuck in me and I dropped to my knees in anguish, returning completely to flesh and tears raining down like pieces of the jet. 

"Noelle!" a familiar voice called out to me before I heard footsteps rushing toward me at top speed.

I didn't look up though, as all I could see was ruins. Cool, strong arms wrapped around me tightly as the sky suddenly got stormy and loud, much like how I was feeling. I grabbed onto those familiar arms once more but made no move to get back up, still silently crying among what was left of my home. Loki dropped down to his knees beside me and just held me where I sat. The air around us started to crackle and boom as he held me against him soothingly.

"What...what the Helheim happened here?" a different voice murmured.

"My home," I whispered in despair. "My cat."

Thor came into both Loki's and my view, kneeling down in front of us with a look of true sorrow, knuckles white as he gripped Stormbreaker. "Tell me who and I'll sort this out myself."

"Shield," snarled Loki for me, rage burning in his eyes hot enough to melt all of Jotunheim. "Fury sent them."

I was sure if this were any other circumstance, Thor would've argued against him but he merely nodded at his brother and took back to the skies he came from.

"Lena?" I asked Loki softly.

"She's safe, I managed to get her to your coven's temple before I could reach you and then Thor showed up right after which is why I apparently missed all this," Loki assured me. "I don't want to seem insensitive here but why didn't this happen on the Hellicarrier."

"I just wanted off that damn thing once I finished the job I came there for, was trying to be the bigger person and not leave a trail of bodies in my wake unnecessarily. They made it personal attacking my home, how the fuck did they find it?"

"That's my fault," another voice spoke up. 

We both turned to see Lena returning to us as well who looked even more remorseful than when she dislocated a kid's arm. "I think they must have figured out my last known location before I entered the warded zone of your property and made an educated guess. I'm sorry I endangered you and destroyed everything."

"I already told you we don't blame you for any of this," I assured her. "They would've figured it out without you sniffing us out first I'd bet, you just sped up the search a bit if anything."

"I can rebuild it," promised Loki. "But I think we should probably lay low elsewhere at least till Thor gives us the green light."

"I thought green lights were your thing," I murmured. "I just want my kitty back, I couldn't even find her body." Of course that's when the tears came back full force. "Welcome to our family, where everything's blown up and the pets don't matter."

"Let's get you out of here, love," Loki tried to coax me.

I shook my head stubbornly though stood up when he did though a bit wobbly from being emotionally exhausted and that's when I heard...something. Moving away from Loki quickly, knowing he would try to poof me away for my health, I went about trying to find the location of the noise, continuing to dig through the debris and softly calling to it, it started to sound like muffled trills or chirps.

"Noelle," called Loki. "You're setting yourself up for disappointment doing that."

I ignored him before pinpointing the source and location of the noise and frantically dug through more of the wreckage, tossing bits and pieces aside till I was looking at yet another pair of familiar green eyes, fur a bit singed and dusty from the explosion but otherwise seemingly completely unharmed. The waterworks then returned out of sheer relief as I finished digging out my furrier cuddle buddy and pulled her from the remains of my house and into my arms, burying my face in her fur which naturally jumpstarted her internal engines purring. 

"Ye of little faith. New rule, you do some kind of protection spell on every member of our family," I told Loki as I walked back to him, kitty still in my arms.

"You are far too attached to her."

I refrained from sticking my tongue out and just held her closer while myself being held by Loki who poofed us away from this depressing foundation and pile of bodies that had been collected there. "Just get us all out of here."

"As you wish," murmured Loki softly and green lights danced around us in an instant.

"You do know that's not a normal cat, right?" Brunhilda told me as we all settled in Thor's cottage for us once more.

"Yeah I know, half Maine Coon, half Cthulhu, best pet I've ever had, keeps all kinds of household pests from invading my home...well up till now sadly," I told her while cleaning Catalie's fur of ash and dust.

"Sorry to hear about your house in Salem," she told me and offered me a bottle of booze I gladly took.

"It was my dream house in my dream town too," I grumbled before taking a swig. "Loki can rebuild it, he said, but like there was a lot of good memories in it, it's not just about what we were living in, it was how we were living in it."

"You two are both immortal though so there's plenty of time to make more ones right? And now you have another housemate to make those memories with, fresh ones with a fresh face. I still can't believe she's Loki's daughter."

"Well we did talk about the impossibility of having kids together," I shrugged but looked over at Loki making sure his daughter was comfortable during these trying times. "Thank you again for letting us stay here till things are sorted out."

"I might not like Loki still but you seem alright." She held out her hand for my cat to sniff before she headbutted said hand giving her permission for pets. "Definitely not your average cat."

"So it's true then," a new feminine voice boomed from the doorway of our cottage.

I let go of Catalie and stood up as did Brunhilda who looked over at the new person and rolled her eyes at her. 

"Loki and his wife are here for a while longer," the voice continued.

I looked over the woman standing at the door, long dark hair in a braid, armored and adorning a hybrid of Asgardian and Earth attire, piercing eyes, proud nature.

"Sif," Loki regarded without saying more, his entire body going tense preparing for anything she might throw at us. "Don't recall inviting you here."

"This is my land and my people, I really don't need you to."

"On my realm granted by my people," I interjected smoothly, standing beside Loki with arms crossed over my chest. "And last I heard Thor and my new best friend Brunhilda were the leaders here, remind me what you're in charge of again?"

"I'm your best friend?" asked Brunhilda asked. "What she said."

"So now you decide to step up," Sif sneered.

"Now that I have backup, yeah," retorted Brunhilda. "Thor made this cottage specifically for them and he's also in charge so they're very clearly welcome here. Likewise, you already have yours to go back to so you can go do that and relax. Wouldn't want Thor to see you in a bad light, now would we?"

Sif glared at the confident equestrian who had the smuggest look on her face, huffed, and stormed off without another word.

"That was fun, always wanted to put her in her place," Brunhilda said.

"Send her my way next time, been looking for a decent female opponent," I suggested hopefully.

"And what am I then?"

"Decent female bestie?"

"You actually mean that, don't you?"

"Would you believe its not easy for me to make new friends?"

She shrugged innocently. "I can understand that."

I beamed happily. "Groovy."


End file.
